Applying its decades of experience in putting the stories of the abused on screen, Lifetime has decided to tackle the story of Flint, Michigan, the bloody, battered spouse of American towns. In the vein of classic populace-in-peril movies like 15 & Pregnant & Poisoned and Mother, May I Sleep With Drinking Water Contaminated With Dangerously High Quantities Of Lead?, the UnREAL network is planning a “hard-hitting, fact-based” examination of the Flint water crisis, which saw thousands of city residents being served toxic drinking water after being assured by the government that it was safe.
The series is being spearheaded by Craig Zadon and Neil Meron, who previously brought the tragic story of a young woman evicted from her home and then forced to beat it down the road—i.e., The Wiz Live—to NBC. (They’re also responsible for the network’s upcoming live staging of A Few Good Men.) Now, taking inspiration from Time writer Josh Sanburn’s “The Toxic Tap”—which details how the people of the former auto manufacturing capitol appear to have been accidentally but systematically poisoned by their own government—the duo will attempt to capture where, exactly, things in Flint went wrong, tapping into the story’s human element, and then presumably shooting it with a nice, flattering soft focus lens.