Show + Tell with Paul Flynn
Like Broadchurch when it was good, Welsh production Keeping Faith is a TV trailblazer
IN WELSH DRAMA Keeping Faith, a husband gets up to go to work and kisses his wife and young kids goodbye, never to be seen again. In a post- Doctor Foster climate of British drama ( Trauma, Collateral, even Strike), where the domestic situation of protagonists has been ramped up to tangents that shift between the ludicrous, the hysterical and back again, it manages to straddle a line between fanciful storylines and fabulously neighbourly characters of the type you might choose to hang out with rather than be ritualistically appalled by.
This gripping story is a co-commission between BBC Wales and S4C, which went out in the motherland last November. Its ground-breaking backstory has been recorded simultaneously in English and the native tongue. It currently has a home on BBC iplayer, dropping episodes weekly, where it is the most watched show on the portal. Take that, Mcmafia.
The indomitable Eve Myles is the reason why. She takes the key role of Faith Howells and learned Welsh from scratch to play her. She devours the part, tearing up every cliché of the whimpering wife left at home pining for Daddy – instead drinking, cussing, working, raising the family and singlehandedly attempting to solve the mystery of her husband’s disappearance all at once. It’s a roller coaster of a role and such a delight to watch an actress like Myles plough through material as if her life depends on it.
The Howells have a struggling family law practice. Their jobs inevitably surround them with a list of local ne’er-do-wells, from the petty burglar to the abusive parent to the serial international criminal fraternity. Their own family and friends’ backstories gently unravel in a series of gripping plot twists and cliffhangers (some quite literal). Anyone charmed by the seaside parochialism and unfettered community angle of the first Broadchurch will find themselves enthralled by Keeping Faith. It has the feeling of that amazing first season, if it was written slightly drunker.
Even in the English language retelling, Keeping Faith revels in its own Welshness. It’s what happens to the gloriously little folk when big events calamitously fall onto the doorstep. The characters’ reactions to Evan’s disappearance are entirely human, local and believable. Catch up, please. On BBC iplayer now