The Portrayal of Wales (again)

The Way -- Celtic Weird at its best........

Around 2015-2016 there was a lot of discussion in the media about "the portrayal of Wales", encouraged by a Senedd Committee set up to investigate the output (in Wales) of high-end drama in film and on TV. An Open University article included these words:

".........the Welsh national character is portrayed as anti-imperial, tolerant and internationalist, by contrast with the English, who are perceived as colonialist and racist. This is, of course, a part of national myth making and cannot be supported by available historical or contemporary evidence. However, it is a deeply held and powerful belief." 

Almost a decade has passed since this was published:

https://jpcrocks.wordpress.com/2015/08/16/wales-on-film/

.........and a lot of it still holds. But many films and TV series have been shown and broadcast since then, and the stereotypes are still being perpetrated. Maybe we see fewer coal mines and male voice choirs than we did back in the day, and its good to see a regular stream of productions taking advantage of the new opportunities for streaming (on Netflix, Amazon Prime etc) and appearing on the mainstream BBC and ITV channels. With S4C playing a pivotal role in the commissioning of new material, there was always a danger that the production companies would concentrate their efforts on small-scale and cheap productions for "internal consumption." But that hasn't happened, and many of the better productions have been reviewed in mainstream media and watched by large audiences across the UK and the rest of the world. So one is justified in asking this question: what does the rest of the world think about Wales, as it is portrayed on the large and the small screen?

One needs to do a proper study to find the answer to that, and in the meantime we can but speculate. In 2013, along came "Hinterland", to be followed by "Hidden" and "Keeping Faith" to confirm that Celtic Noir was really embraced in Wales, having already had a great success across the UK with "Shetland".   Celtic Noir was accepted as a genre across the world, while never quite acquiring the status of Scandi Noir, which is still going strong (one series after another, many of them on the Viaplay streaming channel.)  This is all rather subjective, but my feeling is that Welsh drama output has become a bit messy in the last 5 years, with series like "The Light in the Hall", "Wolf", and "Dal y Mellt" lurking in the shadows and "Pitching In" and "The Valleys", which were supposed to be funny, turning out to be disasters.  But in spite of the brilliance of "Men Up", there is more dark than light. and we now seem to have moved on from Celtic Noir to Celtic Weird.  How else to interpret "The Way" and "Tree on a Hill", two pretentious, chaotic and utterly dreadful series that I gave up on after the first episode.  I know of many other viewers who did the same, and others who switched channels after just a few minutes.

https://www.standard.co.uk/culture/tvfilm/the-way-bbc-one-review-michael-sheen-b1139373.html 

Some comments on the web:
"I really, really wanted to like The Way, especially as it's filmed locally; but so far, it's been nearly 40 minutes of pretentious drivel."
"TheWay on BBC1. Contender for worst drama of the decade."

 "Can't we have a drama set in Wales that isn't grim?  Wales is a beautiful place full of diverse people, every drama that comes out of Wales is daft and grim......"

So now the message about Wales that goes out into the world is that male voice choirs and coal mines have been replaced as icons by ranting martyrs, despairing communities and nutters, portrayed by writers and directors who are more interested in surrealism and innovation than in good stories, well told.  So where next, I wonder?

https://nation.cymru/opinion/we-must-fight-back-against-a-popular-culture-that-depicts-the-welsh-as-idiots/

https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/162/welsh-affairs-committee/news/101267/portrayal-of-wales-on-screen-needs-urgent-improvement/

https://www.thetalentmanager.com/blog/909/tvs-portrayal-of-wales-in-the-spotlight

Welsh TV -- Goodbye Celtic Noir, Hello Celtic Weird

WELSH TV -- GOODBYE CELTIC NOIR, HELLO CELTIC WEIRD

One minute we are celebrating the brilliant "Men Up", and the next minute we are thinking "What on earth is happening with Welsh TV?"

Ten years ago the critics were lauding "Hinterland" in Wales which followed "Shetland" in Scotland as a pioneer of this new thing called "Celtic Noir".  I enjoyed "Hinterland" although its unremittingly dark portrayal of Wales was not to everybody's liking. It didn't succeed in quite the same way as "Shetland" did, and it did get a bit tired towards the end of its run. A bit more humour might have helped. It didn't make a vast amount of money. But it inspired a host of other effective dramas including "Hidden" and "Keeping Faith", and a number of other TV series filmed in both Welsh and English which seem to have become increasingly bizarre over the years. Some have been good and others have been terrible.  Then we had the police investigative real crime reconstruction dramas called "The Pembrokeshire Murders" and "Steeltown Murders" -- the first pretty impressive and the second, in my opinion, somewhat contrived and overblown.

Then we come to the latest (2024) heavily promoted drama series. Am I the only one who gave up watching "The Way" at the end of the first episode, and then did the same with "Tree on a Hill" a few nights ago? Both truly dreadful programmes, in my opinion. "The Way" was a pretentious mish-mash of social protest rhetoric, ludicrous storyline, fairy tale, magic and historical symbolism. Some people liked it, I suppose, but segments of the media re-named it "The Mess", and I can see why.  OK -- it was Michael Sheen's obsession and his name was enough to get it financed, created and broadcast. But did it do anything for the reputation of Welsh TV or the Welsh nation? I fear not.

As for "Tree on a Hill", I found it quite bizarre, which I suppose was the intention of Ed Thomas, who created it, wrote the script, executive produced, and directed it. Eccentricity in characterisation and storyline is OK, but here the characters are so bizarre and caricatured that they are all deeply unlikeable. In "establishing shots", the attempts to flesh out the characters of the key players are very crude.  The storyline is preposterous. And the whole episode, which should hook in the viewer, is laboured and pretentious.  Conversations are for the most part somewhat banal. The actors look bored. Scene after scene goes on for far too long, and all the humour falls flat. It is, after all, promoted as a "dark comedy"............ I wonder if Ed is trying to rebrand himself as the Salvador Dali of Wales? Surrealism is fine, in its place, but this is a mish-mash, maybe arising from a determination to push creative boundaries and create some great work of art that is impossible to pigeon-hole or categorize. Exciting?  Radical? Experimental? Ground-breaking?  Hmmmmm......

At the end of the first episode I found myself longing for a classical drama following the simple rule of portraying ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events.......  I can understand that Welsh screenwriters and production companies want to do exciting and innovative work, and I can understand why the financiers and the broadcasters (not to mention Creative Wales) want to give their support, but drama output should be aimed not at earnest discussion groups in Film and TV degree courses, but at the viewing public.  

So please, no more Celtic Weird. Arguably, Wales has already been misrepresented for too long already  in TV dramas as a place of psychopaths dwelling in semi-derelict farmhouses up on the wild moorlands of mid-Wales.  So de we now want it to be misrepresented again, this time as a place inhabited by complete nutters?