Aimee Lou Wood

In Toxic Town (2025), Aimee Lou Wood lets Tracey Taylor remain visibly hurt while she gets on with the campaign. She keeps that suffering present without making every moment an announcement of it. We were moved by her determination because Wood never suggests that being able to fight means the pain has passed. It is a persuasive performance in a programme whose tidier, more sentimental passages can press too hard for sympathy. With Wood, we do not need much encouragement to care.

Her screen work began with Aimee Gibbs in Sex Education (2019–2023), establishing the warmth and apparent naivety that could easily become a casting habit. Living (2022) gave her quieter work as Margaret Harris opposite Bill Nighy. Her understated presence there is a useful reminder that she does not need a large emotional scene to make an impression. As Chelsea in the third series of The White Lotus (2025), she brings optimism with vulnerability beneath it.

In Toxic Town, the writing is less reliable than its actors. Wood and Jodie Whittaker make the cost of the campaign clear, leaving Sion Trefor’s score to offer emotional encouragement we do not always need. Editors Chris Gill and Jamie Pearson give the campaign pace, but the courtroom stretches become less involving when the script makes room for information at the expense of character. That matters to an assessment of Wood: the programme is strongest when it lets us spend time with the mothers, rather than using them to deliver a lesson.

The risk we see is in the casting: warm, naive or underestimated women can become a narrow set of opportunities, however well she plays them. Her work is worth following for the feelings she allows these characters beyond being pleasant company. We would welcome parts that leave her less obliged to put anyone at ease. Start with Toxic Town, provided a little over-explanation does not spoil an evening.