Polish Noir: ‘Lead Children’ & Other Fact-Based Polish TV Series

olowiane-dzieci_serial_kadr.jpg, default, Frame from the series ‘Lead Children’, 2026, photo: Robert Pałka / Netflix

More and more often, instead of exploring fictional scenarios, our local TV creators choose to present stories of events that made front-page news years ago. Let’s explore how this fashion for non-fiction has been changing Polish television.

Even just the past few months have brought us an abundance of TV shows based on real events from the distant and not-so-distant past. Maciej Pieprzyca’s Lead Children about the Silesian Erin Brockovich of the communist period; Jan Holoubek’s disaster series Heweliusz (both of which are available to watch on Netflix); Bartosz Blaschke’s Heaven: A Year in Hell (HBO), which tackles the history of a religious sect called Heaven; and, finally, Kuba Czekaj’s Czarna Śmierć (The Black Death), revolving around a smallpox epidemic that broke out in Wrocław in the 1960s.

If we add Bunt (Rebellion) to the list – a new Netflix production being released in 2026, inspired by a 1989 prisoners’ revolt – what emerges is an image of Polish television as fully submerged in the past, which it employs as a starting point for discussing the present.

‘Lead Children’: a story about (more than just) communist-era Poland

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Lead Children | Official Trailer | Netflix

A prime example of this trend is Lead Children, a new series by Maciej Pieprzyca, based on a screenplay by Jakub Korolczuk, which tells the story of Dr Jolanta Wadowska-Król. She was a young physician who stood up to the system by revealing the truth about the mortal danger that the nearby smelter plant posed for the inhabitants of the Katowice district of Szopienice in the 1970s. Dr Wadowska-Król discovered that the outbreak of lead poisoning – which took the lives of several children and permanently damaged the health of many others, preventing their proper cognitive development – was caused by toxic waste produced by the smelter, the pride of local authorities.

Years later, Jolanta Wadowska-Król recalled:

The smelter would emit terrifying amounts of lead. Children lived in cramped shoebox spaces, the yards were full of heavy metals. They would absorb them unwittingly. Some died, and so did dogs and canaries… It was the Chernobyl of Silesia.

Without her – a young doctor who had worked in Szopienice since 1968, helping the inhabitants of the nearby tenements – the case probably would never have seen the light of day. When her young patients began to come into her office suffering from acute anaemia, torpor, with their adult teeth falling out and other serious health issues, Wadowska-Król, together with the nurse Wiesia Wilczek, set off to examine around 5,000 children. Years later, in conversation with the newspaper Fakt, she reminisced:

We would knock on door after door and give out referrals. My patients trusted me. I told them I would be analysing the results myself. I asked them not to let the word spread about the exams. If the authorities had found out, they might have forbidden them.

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Still from the series ‘Lead Children’, 2026, photo: Robert Pałka / Netflix

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The government didn’t want word to spread about the harmful impact of the steelworks. Wadowska-Król wasn’t allowed to defend her PhD and local authorities threatened her with prison. Despite these harsh repressions the doctor put up a heroic fight for the health of her young patients.

Her story, conveyed by Michał Jędryka in his book Ołowiane Dzieci: Zapomniana Epidemia (Lead Children: A Forgotten Epidemic) became the basis for a six-part series, in which the story of the courageous doctor and the pathologies of communist-era Poland intertwines with a thoroughly contemporary reflection on how ecological concerns clash with economic interests. The author of the screenplay Jakub Korolczuk (also responsible for the TV series Raven) makes use of a historical setting, but, searching for the actual subject of the story being told, he creates a bridge between the past and the present. Telling the story of ‘Our Lady of Szopienice’, he concerns himself with the victims of greed as well as with a society torn apart by class divisions, in which those pulling the strings of big business and politics see the poor and the powerless as not only insignificant but also disposable.

The retro hues of communist-era Poland

Pieprzyca’s series is yet another recent Polish production tapping into the phenomenon of retrostalgia, i.e. the contemporary audience’s sentimentalising of both the times of the communist regime and of the 1990s (more on those later). Thirty-seven years after the fall of communism, Polish viewers are no longer into the grand, heroic narratives about Polish history, heaps of which were being made as recently as fifteen years ago (e.g. Waldemar Krzystek’s ‘Solidarity’-themed 80 Million). Rather, they treat the communist-era gloss as something that evokes nostalgia and becomes the starting point for touching stories about ‘the common people’. History is merely a background – a splashy, sometimes even kitschy one. Wall units (meblościanki), crystal vases, Plattenbau blocks – all that has become an element of the cinematic universe in which, like in a museum, we can fondly observe how people lived their lives in those not-so-distant, slightly ridiculous times. In the past few decades, the on-screen Polish People’s Republic has ceased to be a space of political oppression, becoming a colourful trend instead.

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Still from the series ‘Lead Children’, 2026, photo: Robert Pałka / Netflix

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Polish producers are well aware of that, and so they eagerly tap into our nostalgic fondness for the period, releasing more and more new productions set in the 1960s and 70s. The viewer’s nostalgia was one of the reasons behind the great popular success of Kuba Czekaj’s Czarna Śmierć last autumn – a story about a smallpox epidemic that broke out in Wrocław in 1963. The director combines a medical drama with an espionage story and a comedy about politicians attempting to keep the truth about the deadly illness from society. Czekaj plays around with stereotypical ways of portraying the era, and the fragments of newsreels woven into the series’ structure work not only to authenticate the world being depicted, but they are also meant to arouse sentiment and carry comedic value.

Recent years have shown us time and time again that longing for some aspects of communist-era Poland proves a perfect key to the viewers’ hearts. For instance, in 2025, Netflix decided to produce the series Projekt UFO (The UFO Project), written and directed by Kasper Bajon. The series – recounting a famous case of an alleged landing of an alien spaceship in Emilcin, a village in the Lublin Voivodeship – is based on a real story from the early 1980s seen through the lens of humour and nostalgia. The set design itself is proof, making use of key props associated with the late communist period in Poland as well as the design typical for the era (such as the distinctive curtain patterns and the now-trending, at the time, armchair models).

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Still from the series ‘Projekt UFO’, 2026, photo: Netflix

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Polish viewers seem strongly attracted to narratives inspired by real-life stories, and producers sometimes ‘compete’ to release the most appealing ones. Suffice it to say, Lead Children wasn’t the only TV project devoted to Dr Wadowska-Król and her struggle against the system. As Netflix was working on the series based on Michał Jędryka’s book, another streaming giant was collaborating with Polish producers on their own project on the same subject.

Children of the nineties

In the last decade, the nostalgia viewers feel for communist-era Poland as seen on screen has given way to yet another trend, namely the 1990s. Recent seasons brought on an incredible proliferation of films and series taking place in that very decade, tapping into its picturesque quality and cinematic potential. There are at least a few reasons behind the popular interest in the nineties, the most important among which might be the era’s vividness. Poland of the transformation period seen through the eyes of filmmakers is a world defined by pronounced divisions: with post-communism on the one hand and the children of ‘Solidarity’ on the other; with a quickly developing economy on the one hand, and on the other – rampant unemployment and masses of people pushed to the economic margin. The 1990s were a period when the Polish society, dazzled by Western culture, was shedding the bonds of homo sovieticus, but they also marked the golden days of organised crime, subcultures, and sects. No wonder, then, that cinema and television are drawn to this bizarre world structured by tensions and internal fractures.

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Still from the series ‘Heaven: A Year in Hell’, photo: HBO

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It’s worth emphasising, though, that there are generational and business factors behind the nostalgia for the 1990s. After all, it’s the people born in the late 1980s and 1990s that, in the past decade, have become the target audience for new TV productions. Raised on TV series, they’re the default addressees of content offered by television and streaming platforms as well as the group most attractive for advertisers. And so, broadcasters fight for their time and attention, with nostalgia serving as a successful means for obtaining them. In fact, this preoccupation goes beyond television and cinema, as demonstrated by the popularity of Olga Drenda’s book Duchologia Polska (Polish Hauntology) or the podcast Podcastex, hosted by Bartek Przybyszewski and Mateusz Witkowski and devoted to various phenomena from the transformation period. If we combine these with the fact that the fashion for the nineties has now spread among Gen Z, we arrive at the answer as to why TV narratives so frequently focus on this particular decade.

Our home, divided by a wall

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Heweliusz – Official English Trailer | Netflix

One example would be the fan favourite of 2025, namely Jan Holoubek’s Heweliusz. Telling the story of the Polish ferry that, in January 1991, sank in the waters of the Baltic Sea, the creators combine a striking disaster narrative with a portrait of the era. Poland as depicted by the scenographer Kasper Bajon is a reality structured by two developments: the emergence of the new establishment and socio-economic marginalisation. Bajon brilliantly captures this dichotomy, introducing a class-oriented narrative of two widows: the bereaved wife of the ship’s captain and the widow of a truck driver who died in the catastrophe.

Additionally, the scenographer, who grew up in the 1990s himself, sprinkles Heweliusz with numerous elements he remembers from those times: from cube-shaped military-style backpacks (the so-called kostka) and the epidemic of car radio thefts, to urban street markets and Romani carpet sellers. Through these details he creates a portrait of the era, for which the faithful scenography and depiction of the social reality proves no less important than the facts of the disaster itself, which the series depicts with small changes only.

For Bajon and Holoubek, this wasn’t the first journey to the world of 1990s’ Poland. In 2022, both creators were involved in the making of another popular Netflix production based on real events: High Water, a story of the flood that hit Wrocław and other Lower Silesian towns in 1997. There, too, real-life events serve as a starting point for a timeless narrative about human beings. While the series faithfully sticks to key facts and dates, what proves more important are human relationships and family conflicts for which the flood serves as the catalyst or background.

The great popular success of the series demonstrates the enormous power of the viewers’ nostalgia and collective memory. Watching High Water, we set off on a journey to the past, remembering the tragic events in which we took part directly or indirectly, and the fact that the creators draw from real-life events makes the fictional narratives woven around them seem much more credible.

The demons of the ‘90s

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Still from the series ‘Heaven: A Year in Hell’, photo: HBO

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The financial and creative success of Jan Holoubek’s series confirmed Polish producers’ belief that fact-based shows set in this period can serve as a key that opens the wallets of most influential streaming platforms. No wonder, then, that with time, more and more new highly popular productions set in the 1990s started to appear on the market.

One of those series, much awaited by Polish audiences, was Heaven: A Year in Hell, the story about the eponymous sect led by Bogdan Kacmajor. For those who grew up in the transformation period, Heaven was pretty much what the Black Volga was for children in the communist era: a lens that focused all the fears and anxieties of the times. The 1990s were a time of ceaseless moral panic, whose sources varied vastly: from HIV and drug addiction to… religious movements that allegedly challenged the authority of the Catholic Church. Even Buddhist communities would evoke anxiety, and members of the Hare Krishna movement were subjects of intentionally bloodcurdling press and TV stories. The Heaven sect fit perfectly with those fear-driven notions, and, after the release of Sebastian Keller’s 2011 book Niebo: Pięć Lat w Sekcie (Heaven: Five Years in a Sect), it quickly piqued the interest of TV producers.

The series, produced by HBO Max and written by Jakub Korolczuk (the author of the script for Ołowiane Dzieci), became a trip down memory lane for many. The psychological story of a young boy (Stanisław Linowski) who ends up in the hands of a charismatic sect leader (Tomasz Kot) is truly a journey into the past. It’s especially the case for those viewers who remember the times when bio-energy therapist Zbigniew Nowak attained peak celebrity status by ‘energising’ our water bottles through the TV screen; when the Polsat channel would show Filipino healers extracting fragments of diseased organs from patients’ bodies without cutting them open (using pieces of poultry liver for the trick); and when, upon seeing Hare Krishnas dancing barefoot, parents would walk their children to the other side of the street.

Rebellion: a story you’ve never heard before

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Frame from the series ‘Bunt’, 2026, photo: Krzysztof Wiktor / Netflix

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On-screen depictions of the 1990s are far from diminishing in popularity. In fact, the coming months will see the release of new productions that’ll send us on a journey back to the most interesting, most important events from that period. The Netflix series Bunt (Rebellion), coming in 2026, inspired by the real-life story of a prison revolt that broke out in December 1989 in penitentiaries in Czarne, Goleniów, and Nowogard. Those were the largest prison rebellions in post-war Europe, fuelled by the energy of Poland’s political breakthrough and the disappointment it caused those forced to watch the beginnings of the transformation period from behind prison bars.

The Round Table agreements and the political changes that followed gave the imprisoned hope that their fate, too, would improve. As a result, when on 7th December 1989 the Teleexpress news announced that the amnesty wouldn’t include repeat offenders, riots broke out in the Czarne prison, as a result of which six people died, many were injured, and the prison building was damaged so badly that it was suitable pretty much only for reconstruction. Interestingly, the story also features figures such as ‘Solidarity’ activists, most prominent among whom was Władysław Frasyniuk – himself imprisoned for opposition activity several years prior, in 1989 he got involved in mediations with the rioting prisoners.

The series, directed by Mateusz Rakowicz and Marek Lechki and written by Marcin Kubawski and Łukasz Bluszcz, will depict a dramatised version of this unjustly forgotten story, but the overall plot will still be based on factual events. Bluszcz was one of the creators behind the excellent 2014 documentary Był Bunt (There Was A Rebellion) concerning the same events. The film reveals a forgotten page from Poland’s history, and the narrative in which great politics meets the daily reality of prison life works as a metaphor for the paradoxes of Poland’s political and economic transformation. Therefore, the series, drawing from the same source and featuring an excellent cast (including Borys Szyc, Filip Pławiak), has great potential to become another Netflix smash hit from the country on the Vistula River.

Addicted to the truth

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Agnieszka Kotlarska as Miss International, a photograph from the series ‘Zabić Miss’ (To Kill the Miss), photo: Jarosław Świątek’s private archive / HBO

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Meanwhile, Polish documentary series are already included among most popular productions of international streaming giants. One of them is Maciej Bieliński’s Zabić Miss (To Kill the Miss), a three-episode story of the career and tragic death of Agnieszka Kotlarska, the Polish Miss Universe murdered by a stalker. A few weeks ago, the series, produced by HBO Max, became the platform’s second most watched documentary worldwide. It was also met with enthusiastic reception in Poland, mostly because for our local viewership, the documentary narrative of obsession offers not only a criminal intrigue plot and a moving story of the innocent victim but also a postcard from the transformation period.

The past few months saw the release of more documentary blockbusters that sent us on a journey into the past. Another one was Skin Hunters by Aleksandra Potoczek about a big case from the early 2000s, when the press covered murders committed by the emergency medical service in Łódź and the practice of ‘trading’ the deceased with local funeral homes. The series by Potoczek and Bieliński paves the way for a new trend in Polish documentary productions while simultaneously responding to the global trend for true crime content, pioneered by works such as Making a Murderer by Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos or Andrew Jarecki’s The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst.

There are many faces of Polish non-fiction series, but they all share one thing: they draw from press articles, non-fiction books, and popular biographies to create narratives in which individual stories become a gateway to generational experiences, combining the energy of the plot with our collective nostalgia. And it’s often the latter that eventually opens the door to financial and creative success.

Translated from Polish by Anna Potoczny

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