Perhaps that is down to Thorne’s script: Susan feels too good for the in-fighting with her on-off boyfriend (Michael Socha), and while Brendan Coyle’s towering performance as head council honcho and all-round badman Roy Thomas is triggering because we’ve all had terrible bosses like him, he is ultimately too villainous to feel believable (the steel worker leads are fictitious but based loosely on real people).
Director Minkie Spiro, of Better Call Saul and Downton Abbey, paints a vivid picture of Corby, from its lively pubs and homes to the harrowing omnipresence of industrial vehicles dumping smog on the town as locals go about their daily lives.
Aimee Lou Wood is excellent as vulnerable, loveable Tracey, the sort of person who, like so many of us, feels predisposed to avoid confrontation but is forced to go totally out of her depth in her pursuit of justice.
Given Netflix’s penchant for a happy ending I’m not sure why they didn’t use the time-hopping element to fast forward to the present day: in 2019 Corby was named the fastest-growing borough outside London, and employment rates were recently higher than the national average at 75 per cent.
As her counterpoint, Jodie Whittaker is immense as the livewire social justice warrior Susan, and she puts on a decent Glaswegian drawl too (many workers came down from Scotland to work in the industry).
