TV Talk: Spy games lead to ‘The Salisbury Poisonings’ on AMC+

Trib Total Media TV writer Rob Owen offers a viewing tip for the coming week.

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Here’s something that is likely to happen more often as the entertainment business looks into the future and sees that it’s digital: There’s a show premiering this week on AMC+, a streaming service you probably don’t get or maybe have never even heard of.

So consider this a show worth remembering for when it airs on linear AMC on cable early next year. (Or subscribe now: AMC+ costs $6.99 per month for new subscribers and includes ad-free shows from AMC, BBC America, SundanceTV and IFC as well as programs from streamers Shudder, Sundance Now and IFC Films Unlimited. AMC+ is available to DISH Network, Sling TV and Comcast Xfinity X1 and Flex customers as an app.)

“The Salisbury Poisonings,” streaming Thursday on AMC+, is a British import about the use of nerve agent Novichok, in the news again recently after it was used to poison Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny, who is now recovering.

In 2018 Novichok was used on a double agent and spy in the British city of Salisbury.

The four-part miniseries occasionally strives to be a “Hot Zone”-like thriller while also offering a compassionate depiction of first responders, public health officials and victims. Sometimes it leans heavier into the character stories at the expense of thrills but the story of a nerve agent transferred through skin contact has resonance in the covid-19 era.

Executive producer Adam Patterson said he first learned of “contact tracing” when meeting to discuss the Novichok incident with Salisbury public health director Tracy Daszkiewicz, played in the series by Anne-Marie Duff (“His Dark Materials”).

“We’d never heard those words before and it’s just amazing now that they’re part of everyone’s general dialogue,” Patterson said during a virtual TV critics press tour in August.

Executive producer- director Saul Dibb said though the story begins with the poisoning of a spy, “The Salisbury Poisonings” is not a spy story.

“This was (about) fallout from a spy story,” Dibb said. “This was about the consequences and the collateral damage. In the script and in the drama itself the focus was, in a sense, pointing away from the actions themselves and looking at the people who bore the brunt of this attack.”