A film crew working on a three-part factual drama examining the impact of the novichok poisonings on Salisbury has been spotted working on the streets of the city.

The crew was using real-life backdrops such as the Maltings shopping centre, where the Russian former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, collapsed after being poisoned with the nerve agent.

Among the actors seen in the Wiltshire city were Rafe Spall and MyAnna Buring, who recently starred in another drama focusing on a Russian attack on British soil: the play A Very Expensive Poison, which tells the story of the murder of Alexander Litvinenko.

There was no sign of Anne-Marie Duff, who is starring in the BBC television blockbuster His Dark Materials and is a lead actor in the Salisbury drama. It is being produced for BBC2 and is expected to air next year.

According to the broadcaster, Salisbury will focus on how ordinary people and public sector workers reacted to the crisis, displaying heroism as their city became the focus of an unprecedented national emergency in March 2018. The aim, it said, was to capture the bravery, resilience and, in some cases, personal tragedy of the unsuspecting locals.

The Skripals survived the attack but three months later, as Salisbury began to return to normal, a local couple, Charlie Rowley and Dawn Sturgess, also fell ill from novichok poisoning. Sturgess died while Rowley has ongoing mental and physical health issues.

Sturgess’s parents, Stan and Caroline, have said they still have many unanswered questions and have called for more clarity from the British government about the poisonings. In an interview with the Guardian in February, they spoke passionately about their sense of injustice that Dawn, a mother of three from a respectable family, was unfairly portrayed as a homeless drug user.

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The BBC has not said who the actors are playing. Spall was filmed crossing a road with Salisbury’s famous cathedral spire in the background and walking towards the Maltings shopping centre.

Buring and other actors were seen in the Market Place as behind them workers prepared the area for the switch-on of the Christmas lights. Some bystanders pointed out that they had not seen so many cameras in the city since the actual attack.

The drama is being directed by Saul Dibb, whose previous work includes The Line of Beauty, The Duchess and Bullet Boy. The crew has also been spotted filming in Bristol, Clevedon in Somerset and Malmesbury in Wiltshire.