Dan Vernon’s The Salisbury Poisonings: A Spy Next Door premieres on Sunday, July 12, at 8 p.m. ET, putting the Salisbury poisoning back in prime-time rotation. For viewers who want it without a traditional pay-TV setup, the film is available with a 5-day free trial on DIRECTV, and it streams Monday on the app.
March 2018 is the case the documentary revisits: Sergei Skripal and Yulia were targeted in Salisbury, England, in the Novichok nerve-agent attack. The film treats that episode as more than a headline; it returns to a chemical attack that forced a public-facing response while an investigation was still moving.
Charlie Rowley in The Salisbury Poisonings
Charlie Rowley appears in an exclusive interview, giving the film a direct link to the aftermath beyond the original poisoning. He is the partner of Dawn Sturgess, who died after being exposed to the same nerve agent months after the initial attack, which widens the documentary from a single incident into a longer human and investigative timeline.
That shift matters because the story is not limited to the first strike. The film follows the Novichok attack into its later consequences, and that is where the case stops being only about a targeted assault and becomes a record of what followed when the poison spread into a second tragedy.
Dan Vernon and the 8 p.m. ET slot
8 p.m. ET is the live window for the premiere, and it places The Salisbury Poisonings: A Spy Next Door in a spot designed for broad reach rather than niche catch-up viewing. The Monday availability on the app then turns the film into a next-day streaming title, while DIRECTV’s 5-day free trial gives cord-cutters a free route in from the start.
Dan Vernon, the BAFTA-winning filmmaker behind the documentary, is using the format to revisit a case that turned Salisbury into the center of an international investigation and diplomatic crisis. The film does not resolve the wider accountability questions, and that leaves the viewer with the same pressure the case carried in real time: a clear chain of events, and a disputed political and legal aftermath still hanging over it.
For viewers, the practical move is simple: watch live Sunday at 8 p.m. ET, use DIRECTV if the goal is free access without a cable package, or wait until Monday and stream it on the app. The documentary’s value is in that sequence — premiere first, then on-demand access — with Charlie Rowley’s interview supplying the most immediate reason to pay attention when the credits roll.
