Channel 4's new four-part drama begins tonight which tells the story of a small Welsh community ripped apart when an industrial explosion causes a factory block to collapse with a group of teenagers stuck inside.
The mini-series' writer Jack Thorne, whose writing credits include This Is England and Skins, has shared that the gripping drama is fictional but how after the real life tragedy of the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire - which killed 72 people - the show's story "changed."
"The idea was always to look at class and restorative justice, that that was the sort of thing that we wanted to look at, and I had an idea in my head. And then Grenfell happened, and the idea changed," he told Radio Times.
He added: "The concept of looking at corporate manslaughter, and the way a corporate manslaughter trial might work came about."
Jack also unveiled that he has shut down offers to dramatise the Grenfell disaster.
He said: "I actually was offered Grenfell three times by three different production companies, who wanted to tell the Grenfell story. ‘I didn’t feel like there were the facts in place to look at it properly without hurting an awful lot of people, and doing a television thing of trampling over people’s lives. Not to say that there isn’t a beautiful drama to be made, I just didn’t feel capable of it myself."
In The Accident Sarah Lancashire plays Polly Bevan, whose daughter Leona (newcomer Jade Croot) is at the centre of the tragedy.
Meanwhile, her husband Iwan (Mark Lewis Jones) is head of the council, and the driving force behind the project locals hope will revitalise the area.
But who’s to blame for the disaster?
Is it Harriet (Borgen’s Sidse Babett Knudsen), whose company owns the factory?
Or will the finger be pointed at someone closer to home?
While the Bevans try to process what has happened to their daughter and her friends, viewers are hit with the twist that the jovial council leader isn’t all he seems, and that he and hairdresser Polly have a dark, complicated and sometimes violent relationship.
*The Accident begins tonight on Channel 4 at 9pm.
