High-end TV dramas filmed in Wales

In a previous post I bewailed the fact that there were several high profile "high-end dramas" set in Scotland, England and Northern Ireland but nothing in Wales.  (High end drama is drama costing over £1 million per hour -- and subsidised via tax relief mechanisms.)   We are talking here about big long-running drama series like Outlander, Dr Who, The Crown, Game of Thrones, Victoria or Poldark.

Several observers have also bewailed the fact that Wales is the place where big films are made, but where hardly any of them are big narratives telling the Welsh story.

http://brian-angelmountain.blogspot.com/2018/10/latest-research-on-high-end-tv-drama.html

So I tried to check up on how many productions in Wales have been in receipt of the tax subsidy over the last few years.  I got no sense out of the Welsh Government, so I submitted a FOI request to HMRC, and got no sense from them either, on the basis that no regional or national lists are kept, and that in any case the requests for tax concessions are private or confidential matters between the companies concerned and HMRC.  They said that the Welsh Government is probably not involved in that process -- and I accept that -- but of course the Welsh Government has to know about every big project since finances are very carefully scrutinized so as to assure financial viability.

I suppose one could find out more by scrutinizing the accounts submitted by each company to Companies House -- but some of them reveal hardly anything about companies with multi-million pound turnovers.

At long last I have got some sort of a response from one of the senior civil servants in Cardiff, who says: "I can assure you that there have been several productions which are partly or wholly set in Wales that have received the tax credit.  Some have received separate finance from the Welsh Government and some have not."   The key words there are "partly or wholly" -- so the several productions will undoubtedly include Dr Who, Atlantis, The Bastard Executioner, and A Discovery of Witches.  One scene set in Wales will probably entitle the production company to request high-end tax relief,so long as some of the production work is done in Welsh studios.  (That's not unusual -- production companies do it all the time.  I know of one production company that tailors every single project to the places where the best financial / tax relief / subsidy regimes are currently in place -- and if that means doing a spot of filming in Lithuania, or Greece, or Spain, so be it...........!)

So where are the big dramas set in Wales and telling the Welsh story for the people of Wales and for a global audience?  There aren't any.........   Hinterland and Keeping Faith have no doubt brought Wales to the attention of a global audience, but they are not specifically Welsh dramas.  They are crime dramas belonging to specific genres that just happen to be set in wales.