Minkie Spiro gets persuasive work from actors and keeps complicated stories clear, though her polished images can make troubled lives look too tidy. We rate her most when she lets a performance make the point without further explanation.
Fi1m perspective
In All Her Fault (2025), glass keeps separating people in the Irvines’ house even when they are supposed to be talking. Spiro and fellow director Kate Dennis make that expensive home feel ill-suited to an ordinary conversation. We rate Spiro as a sympathetic director of actors, particularly when the script gives those actors room to be less tidy than their surroundings. Her work is less persuasive when the pictures make distress look comfortable, or the dialogue explains what a performance has already told us.
Her career has moved from British series through American episode work towards fuller responsibility for limited series. Holby City (2004) came before Downton Abbey (2010), with Better Call Saul (2015) among the US credits. On Pieces of Her (2022), she directed the full series and also served as executive producer. Our strongest reason to follow her is the acting in Toxic Town (2025).
Across its four episodes, Spiro keeps the families affected by the Corby toxic waste case in view without letting the legal dispute take over. We were angered by Toxic Town because Jodie Whittaker and Aimee Lou Wood make the mothers’ hurt specific, rather than asking us simply to applaud their courage. Wood’s Tracey Taylor can look determined and wounded at once, and Spiro allows both feelings to remain. Cinematographers Sergio Delgado and Tony Miller, alongside production designers Alexandra Toomey and Julian Nagel, give these lives a polished tidiness that softens some of the discomfort. The actors make the suffering harder to dismiss.
All Her Fault is less consistent, though Spiro directed its first four episodes, the stretch we found compulsive. Sarah Snook’s frightened, level-voiced mother holds our attention when the plotting cannot earn it. Jeff Beal’s low, patient score helps early on, particularly when it falls silent; its later insistence on underlining revelations is a problem the drama shares. That weakness also troubles Toxic Town, which too often tells us what its mothers’ struggle means. Start with Toxic Town, provided a little unnecessary explanation will not spoil an evening of good acting.
Biography
Minkie Spiro is a British television and film director and executive producer. She studied graphic design at Central Saint Martins, graduating with First Class Honours, and later completed a Master's degree in Film Directing at the Royal College of Art. She began her career as a photographer and photojournalist before moving into directing.
Her television credits include episodes of Skins (2007), Downton Abbey (2010), Better Call Saul (2015), Marvel's Jessica Jones (2015), Barry (2018), Dead to Me (2019), 3 Body Problem (2024), All Her Fault (2025) and Toxic Town (2025). She has also served as executive producer on several series, including All Her Fault and Toxic Town.
In 2004 she received a BAFTA nomination for Best Newcomer to TV Fiction for her work on Holby City.
