Netflix Takes Stance On Poor Air Quality With Disappearing Billboards Promoting New UK Series ‘Toxic Town’
A set of giant Netflix billboards have been erected in the UK today promoting factual drama Toxic Town, but not everyone walking past will be able to see them.
Netflix is attempting to raise awareness of Britain’s poor air quality problem by making some of the billboards harder to view than others, depending on the air quality levels of the city they are in.
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“If the air quality is ‘good’ you will see a full poster for the series. If the air quality is ‘poor’, we are sacrificing our billboards to be covered in a cloud of white smoke,” said a Netflix tweet promoting the billboards earlier today. “Just because you can’t see it, doesn’t mean it’s not happening,” added Netflix of the nation’s growing issue of poor air quality.
Toxic Town launched last Thursday and charts the tragic story of the Corby poisonings. Starring Sex Education’s Aimee Lou Wood, Jodie Whittaker and Robert Carlyle and penned by factual drama aficionado Jack Thorne, Toxic Town tells of the scandalous toxic waste spillages in Corby and the ensuing legal battle that has been dubbed the ‘British Erin Brokovich.’ Following the closure of one of the largest steelworks in Europe in the mid-1980s, the council demolished the site as part of a program of urban regeneration, which involved transporting waste through populated areas via open lorries. In the late-1980s and early-1990s, the rates of upper limb defects in babies born in Corby were subsequently found to be three times higher than those of children born in the surrounding area, and 18 families filed a lawsuit that eventually ended up victorious in the UK’s High Court in 2009.
The show has garnered a solid set of reviews, with praise lavished on Whittaker’s performance in particular. It is an example of Netflix turning to traditional UK factual drama a year after Mr Bates vs the Post Office dominated national conversation. Disney+ has also joined the factual drama party with Jeff Pope’s upcoming Suspect: The Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes.
Netflix has commissioned plenty splashy billboards over the years, promoting hits like Stranger Things and Black Mirror, although this is the first to take an environmental stance.
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