The Salisbury Poisonings

It's obvious that the negative comments are coming from certain factions as they're not interested in hearing the human story behind the headlines and only want to debunk the truth. It's not perfect by any means but gives a very good interpretation of the multi agency approach and the difficulties that they had in dealing with this diabolical encroachment on British soil and continue to play their Cold War games not only in the UK but also in Europe. We need to keep telling these stories and expose the threats to our everyday lives by these criminal acts.

So to the one star reviewers, are you being paid to do them?

Let's start with ricpambon - well he has only submitted this one review, that should tell you something. He says that Dawn sprays the liquid on her wrist in the first episode, she doesn't, she may well spray something then but not from the Novichok bottle. The people involved were interviewed for the series and I would have though Charlie could have told them where he found the bottle so to say the BBC don't know is plainly ridiculous.

AnthonyVincentBruno - well is only contribution is a two line slag off of Marc Addy, did he steal your wife? No other constructive criticism, so why bother.

Smoochemail - well again the only review this person has submitted so I find that as suspect as the first one I mentioned. their erroneous comment that you don't recover from Novichok is laughable when four people quite obviously did!

pkeenor - again only this one review, how do you expect us to believe you?

dayeym - probably the only believable review, other reviews are mixed. Maybe it was too long for him but to say it's rubbish with no explanation other than it was too long isn't' right.

So to my opinion, well I used to live near Salisbury, moved abroad before this incident happened but still had family in the area when it did, still do. So i recognised a lot of the locations used, yes they did film in the city.

I thought all the cast were believable, yes even the fat bloke from the Tesco ads. When you saw the real people at the end you realised how well they were cast. As a previous reviewer stated Anne-Marie Duff was excellent and nice not to have a supermodel play the part, as the Yanks would have done. Rafe Spall well he is a chip off the old block isn't he! MyAnna Burning from Ripper Street, and more, proves what a versatile actor she is, born in Sweden, you wouldn't know it from the accent here. Then there is Annabel Scholey from The Split, I could go on, there wasn't a duff performance here,

The fact that the real protagonist are shown at the end proves they were all involved in the creation of this series. To say it was a misrepresentation of the facts is an insult those involved and particularly the family and memory of Dawn Sturgess, shame on you.

I just watched all of this and was much impressed. It could have been done differently,it could have been a Hollywood movie or it could be less fact based but I think the approach taken was the correct one. The far left Russian apologists and the anti BBC Daily Mail readers seem to have formed a sort of Nazi-Soviet pact to slag off this production. I will give no plot spoilers but having followed the real events in the news when it happened it seems like a fair account of what happened. This is not a glamorous production. The famous tourist attractions of Salisbury are not featured and Anne-Marie Duff should be praised for looking like a real women and not a model in this.

In the main I enjoyed this drama. My only problem with it is the problem I have with many TV dramas, and that is that it was overly dramatic and at times overacted. Too many scenes of Anne-Marie Duff and her obnoxious son which didn't drive the narrative beyond that she was working hard and wasn't home as much as usual. In fact there were too many scenes of character's home lives and not enough of the police investigation in general. The dialogue was at times unconvincing and unnatural too. I'm sure everyone who worked on the case at the time found it draining at times, but the writer turned up the misery on everyone's faces to 11 and for me that's just lazy and not at all like real life at all. They could have cut out about 1 hour of the over sentimental nonsense and made it a really good watch, but they didn't hence 7 stars from me.

Could have been so much better and so much more enlightening. But the makers obviously have a preference for melodrama rather than recognising the events for what they were. Far too long, unless you like soaps.