Everyone in the East Midlands knows about the infamous Corby birth defects case. I grew up in Kettering, which was a challenge to say the least, and the town had its fair share of folklore that lingered in everyone’s memories as symptoms of a neglected, unimportant and insignificant midlands town with a dead industry and little government attention. However, when we Kettering folk lamented the loss of our once booming shoe industry, or discussed our 20-year long dance with working-class conservatism, or even saw our one attraction, Wicksteed Park, go into administration for the umpteenth time, we only had to utter the phrase “at least we’re not Corby,” to make ourselves feel better. This trivial town rivalry exists in most counties in the UK. Unfortunately, in the East Midlands it has extremely dark undertones, which was recently shared with the world in Netflix’s miniseries, Toxic Town (2025).

“There is a possibility that my criticisms come from a place of anger at the lack of general onscreen representation for the East Midlands”

Toxic Town is about the infamous legal case, brought against Corby Council, due to a high concentration of birth defects within a short period of time in the same area. It references Corby’s roots, as a town that once boasted a huge steelworks and attracted many Scots in search of work, as well as touching on the real villain in its destruction, Maggie Thatcher. Corby’s Scottish roots are well-known in the area, and a useful explanation for Jodie Whittaker’s inconsistent accent in the series. The all-star Netflix cast also includes familiar faces Aimee Lou Wood (Sex Education) and Claudia Jessie (Bridgerton), who both have that unpolished British midlands accent; the series did well to not follow in the footsteps of the similar American film, Erin Brockovich (2000), which pretends Julia Roberts is your working-class everywoman in a similar legal case. The series was personally moving, as myself and many of my friends were born only a couple of years after and had parents who lived and worked in Corby. My emotional response was underscored by this context.

However, separating my personal emotional response from my critical cinephilic eye, the series leaves much to be desired as a drama, and would have been better labelled a docu-drama, or even better should have been extended into a full series. The foreshadowing shots of the toxic ‘dust,’ are painfully overt and fairly awkwardly included; a scene where Maggie Mahon (Claudia Jessie) hits her husband’s used trousers, producing clouds and clouds of orange dust, are unmistakably foreshadowing even if you are not already aware of the case. I would have enjoyed more exploration of the dynamic between the press, investigators and the mothers themselves; working people in the midlands are extremely distrusting of the press, yet Susan McIntyre (Jodie Whittaker) seems to agree pretty easily to collaboration with the journalists who were clearly exploiting the possibility of a story for a sensationalist article that sells papers. I also felt the resolution was anticlimactic; the series would have done better to explore the emotional state of Tracey Taylor (Aimee Lou Wood) who was told her late baby would not be included in the case due to legal bureaucratic constraints, yet once that decision was made she was given very little further screen time. This meant that the court case’s resolution was not as much of an emotional climax for a viewer as it could have been.

“It is time we talked about more towns like Corby”

However there is a possibility that my criticisms come from a place of anger at the lack of general onscreen representation for the East Midlands; of course I wanted Toxic Town to be perfectly gut-wrenching and accurate, and of course I am going to be sceptical of a multinational corporation such as Netflix taking ownership of such a regional trauma. Our only other media representation comes from Kinky Boots (2005), a musical which often loses touch with regional character through a celebration of metropolitan drag culture (and ignores the fact that drag queens did not in fact save Northampton’s shoe industry) and James Acaster, who put Kettering on the map through his dry and sometimes unintelligent stand-up. Toxic Town had the potential to embody an authentic and emotionally intelligent representation of the East Midlands, and I am unconvinced that it did so in only four episodes by Netflix.

As Susan McIntyre claims almost too eloquently in the series, “No one cares about the working class in this country.” This is testament to both the Netflix screenwriters’ lack of grasp of the general colloquial language of the midlands, but also exemplifies the series and its production as a whole, and the cultural representations of the East Midlands. The story of Toxic Town is a case study in the utter neglect of many industrial towns after Thatcher, and the extended butterfly effect which is far-reaching and painful, and I am grateful to the series for bringing this to international discourse. However, Toxic Town is just one attempt to explore this distressing regional memory – it is time we talked about more towns like Corby.

Want to share your thoughts on this article? Send us a letter to letters@varsity.co.uk or by using this form