“It doesn’t sound like something that happens in your town.” The 2018 poisoning of former Russian military officer turned British double agent Sergei Skripal, along with his daughter Yulia, was extraordinary because of where it took place. Not that there are many locations where Russian agents using a chemical weapon against a former asset would be normal – but it would be relatively easy to comprehend in Paris, London or Berlin. In the quiet Wiltshire cathedral city of Salisbury, the contrast between everyday life and lethal international espionage was acute.
That’s the most prominent of many angles taken by The Salisbury Poisonings: A Spy Next Door, a not quite comprehensive but still nicely busy feature length documentary that offers a compendium of ways in which the Salisbury attack was fascinating and deeply strange.
