The question posed by the new hit Netflix series Toxic Town is one of the most terrifying that a parent might ever have to face: How far would you go to protect your children?
Based on the true story of the Corby poisonings, Toxic Town dramatizes one of the UK’s worst environmental scandals — and it’s quickly becoming one of the streaming giant’s most acclaimed releases of the year. The four-part limited series currently holds a perfect 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes (as of this writing), making it one of the best-reviewed shows of 2025 so far.
Starring Jodie Whittaker, Aimee Lou Wood, and Claudia Jessie, the series follows three mothers whose children were born with birth defects due to toxic waste mismanagement in Corby, Northamptonshire. The steelworks shutdown in the 1980s left behind a massive cleanup operation — but the way that hazardous materials were handled led to devastating consequences for local families.
The series doesn’t just focus on the tragedy itself; it shines a light on the mothers’ relentless fight for justice. The emotional weight of their legal battle against the Corby Borough Council makes for gripping, powerful television. Critics have praised the show’s nuanced performances and sensitive approach to such a difficult subject, helping to explain why the series has earned such universal acclaim. “It was just so incredible to see and to see how it affected other parts of their life,” Toxic Town writer Jack Thorne says in a Netflix promotional interview.
“It’s not just this simple hero’s journey of women banding together and fighting the man and getting this court victory. There’s nothing simple about it at all. You see where their power comes from, which is really just in the most basic level of humanity that they show for each other.”
What makes Toxic Town so compelling is how it balances courtroom drama with the deeply personal stakes at its core. It’s a reminder of how environmental negligence can destroy lives — and how ordinary people can rise up to demand accountability. And with its 100% critics’ score and the kind of word-of-mouth buzz that makes a show unmissable, Toxic Town is shaping up to be one of Netflix’s most important releases of the year.
“It’s a genuinely working-class story,” Thorne says. “It’s a story of people who are not part of the system that have never thought the system would work for them, working within the system and [fighting for] the result they deserved.”
