Thursday 13 April 2017

Keeping Faith Starts Production ...


It's taken over four years (my producer says nearly five), but the first series of Keeping Faith starts filming next Tuesday April 18th. No press release from the broadcasters yet, so I have to be careful ...

Series one is an eight part crime thriller, warm-hearted, I hope, set in a small South Wales town of the kind most would consider an idyll, untouched by the wickedness of the outside world. They would be wrong, of course ...

The story follows Faith Howells (played by the wonderful Eve Myles), who is a mother of three young children and devoted wife to Evan, (played by her real life husband, Bradley Freegard). Together they run the small law firm set up by Evan's rakish grandfather after the war. When we meet them, Faith is on extended maternity leave and savouring the last precious months of being with her children full time.

Then, one Wednesday morning, Evan leaves for work  and never arrives. Faith's tranquil life is thrown into chaos. The story follows her over the next frantic week as she discovers that there was far more to Evan than she ever imagined ...

The story is set in and around Laugharne, the beautiful small  town, village really, where Dylan Thomas spent his final years. The cast is all Welsh and we're shooting in both Welsh and English - this is a co-production between BBC Wales and S4C. We have a very talented producer/director in Pip Broughton who promises to bring a unique visual style which makes the most of the evocative landscapes.

I've tried to lace the scripts with plenty of humour. Some of my earliest efforts at writing were comedic, and there's some of that here. There's something in Welsh voices - the rise and fall, the inherent music - which cries out for colourful, sometimes heightened dialogue. Eve Myles delivers it with great passion and warmth.

I sneaked a picture at the readthrough this week and below is a shot of Eve Myles, who, miraculously, has learned to speak Welsh during the last six months.

The shoot will take five months for transmission in November. My job is done - now back to writing the novel.