On
a cold dark October eve, armed with a cuppa and feet up, I was ready for a rare
creature on the box. A Wales-set drama shown across the UK. No, not the one
with Eve Myles and the irritating soundtrack. Rather, an emotionally charged
four-parter about a community coming to terms with an industrial accident, and
the families cry for justice as per Aber-fan, Zeebrugge, Grenfell. I had already
written a mostly positive piece about The
Accident to the Welsh-language weekly Golwg and urged my friends and
colleagues to tune in. Half an hour later, my tea was still untouched. I felt
uneasy. Baffled. This wasn’t the same drama I saw at the London preview. My
WhatsApp jingled: “Hmmm. Not feeling it so far, Dyl!!” Others were
conspicuous in their silence. I was embarrassed. Had I recommended a turkey?
On
second viewing, the quibbles that niggled me at the première became clearer.
The google-translated banner at the St David’s Day Fun Run (Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Sant
– Rhedeg). The wince-inducing “boyo” spoken by Kai Owen’s character. The rescuers
venturing into the ruins with a sparking grinder despite fears of a gas leak.
The solemn crowd’s “Abide with Me”, whereas the clichéd Guide Me, O Thou Great Redeemer would’ve rung truer. And the accents. Mowredd,
those accents. The twitteratis were tamping.
@TomosWilliams1
#TheAccident
15 mins in and looks like @Channel4
have done everything they can to combine Skins, Happy Valley & Casualty
into one show with the dodgiest South Walian accents
‘This is our second production
based in Wales – our first was Kiri, also by Jack Thorne... Jack is also half
Welsh and we knew from the off that The Accident would be set in a small
valleys town.’
Jack
Thorne, the Bristolian behind the Channel 4 trilogy examining the themes of guilt, blame, responsibility and culpability
in modern Britain. I was eagerly awaiting a series in which my country didn’t
pretend to be Holby city, planet Gallifrey or something or other with dӕmons. It’s
a crying shame that The Accident consists of outsiders pretending to be
Welsh plus a plethora of English lawyers from the Alun Cairns school of casting.
BAFTA-laden Sarah Lancashire from Happy Valley and Last Tango in
Halifax confessed that the accent was testing:
'I did a lot of work on it. A lot. It was really challenging.
It was awful. In fact, we started filming this in April and just to give you an
indication of how long it took me, I had my Christmas dinner speaking in a
Welsh accent as I started last November.'
Not
that she had much say in the matter, as Jack Thorne explained ‘... I
wrote it with her in mind and once it was finished I sent it to her and held my
breath and thankfully she said yes.’
It
could have been worse. As in a Monica Dolan kind-of-worse, with her comedy
Leanne Wood-cum-Indian accent in W1A or Tom Hardy’s baffling Locke.
And lest we forget the Irish American How Green Was My Valley (1941).
But
it could and should have been so, so much better. The scenes between Harriet
Paulsen (Sidse Babett) and her wooden PR toyboy are pretty excruciating.
And it’s not as if we’re a dearth of actors. S4C has just celebrated its 37th
year, and many of its alumnus have found worldwide fame. Less ‘praise the lord!
we are a musical nation’, more of a nation of fantastic bilingual performers. Think
Iwan Rheon (Game of Throne), Erin Richards (Gotham City), Rhys
Ifans (Official Secrets) and Matthew Rhys (The Americans and the new Perry Mason for HBO)
who surprised his US fans last year after accepting his Emmy award in his native
accent.
And
yet, here we are in 2019, with London drama commissioners (or soon-to-be-Leeds
in Channel 4’s case) ignoring our homegrown talent, apart from the excellent
Jade Croot of Merthyr. Eiry Thomas has been criminally underused as the
grieving single mam too. Despite all its faults, I’m still watching, along with
2
million others. Mostly mesmerized by the performances of deaf
actress Genevieve Barr and Lancashire, and seeing how the court scenes plays
out.
On the whole, a disappointing case of nid
da lle gellir gwell.
