Lead Children Review 2026 Tv Show Series Cast Crew Online
In 1974, the city of Silesia, Poland is getting ready for a visit from Soviet general secretary Leonid Brezhnev, and the intention is to make the Szopienice smelting plant a centerpiece of the Soviet leader’s visit. It’s an initiative of Zdzisław Grudzień (Zbigniew Zamachowski), one of the city’s leaders, over the objections of Silesian Voivode Jerzy Ziętek (Marian Dziędziel).
At a festival next to the plant, Dr. Jolanta Wadowska-Król (Joanna Kulig) is enjoying a festival with her family when a child passes out. She runs to help the child and sees signs that he’s anemic, especially the fact that he’s small for his age.
The next day, at the clinic where she works, she notices more anemic kids coming from the area of Szopienice, and her nurse tells her that the previous doctor treated anemic children from there all the time. The stats she research bears out that there seems to be an epidemic of anemia near the plant. She decides to go to the residences near the plant to reexamine those kids, and finds many of them anemic and undersized. One of the kids’ mothers has her water break when the doctor is there, but the baby is tragically stillborn.
She then goes to the children’s hospital to examine the child that passed out at the festival and eventually finds out that he was transported to the city hospital, where her husband Zbyzek (Sebastian Pawlak) works as a urologist. She finds more children in a shut-off ward in that hospital, and continually sneaks in to examine them, to the point where one of the doctors takes down her plate and the police bring her in on made up hit-and-run charges.
As she probes, town officials like security officer Hubert Niedziela (Michał Żurawski), who is in charge of keeping the epidemic under wraps, tries to figure out what to do with her. But, after she’s released from jail, Jolanta puts together that the children near the smelting plant are all suffering from lead poisoning.
Lead Children, which is based on a true story, starts off bleak and only promises to get bleaker. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, especially if you’re invested in the story of how Jolanta risks her life and career to get the word out about the children suffering lead poisoning because of the Szopienice smelting plant. But the series has the potential to be a difficult watch, as we see the young doctor try to save these children and expose the scandal, all the while under threat from the Communist party officials who want it kept under wraps.
Director Maciej Pieprzyca gets the look and spirit of Communist Poland right, showing that even though the government was oppressive and the economy was always in tatters, the people still found opportunities to have hope and live their lives. We see moments like that in the first episode, like Jolanta and Zbyzek having a romantic moment at home. Even in depressing times, people always try to live their lives and spend time with loved ones.
But the other sign of hope is that Jolanta decides to keep pressing on with her mission to expose the lead poisoning epidemic, despite overwhelming pressure from city officials like Niedziela. It’s a way for Pieprzyca and the series’ writers to show that as oppressive as Communist rule could be, there were still opportunities for people to stand up and make change. We hope that message cuts through what might end up being a pretty grey and depressing story.
