The tumultuous birth of S4C, and thus regular television broadcasting in Welsh, is dramatised in a new film, Y Sŵn. Roger Williams, who wrote it, spoke to Keiron Self about his motivations in bringing it to the screen, and his own journey from a preteen SuperTed fan…
Roger Williams has been at the forefront of Welsh TV and theatre writing for decades. His early stage play, 1997’s Gulp, was one of the first in Wales to deal frankly with gay relationships. He subsequently went on to work in television, writing for the likes of Hollyoaks, The Story Of Tracy Beaker and Pobol Y Cwm, picking up a Welsh BAFTA for his work as lead writer on Caerdydd.
Founding production company Joio in 2012, he created rural drama Tir and the excellent Port Talbot-set thriller Bang for S4C, and last year moved into features with the lyrical and disturbing The Feast. Now, with Y Sŵn, he tackles something completely different: the birth of S4C itself.
A superb, irreverent and uplifting drama that educates, informs and entertains, the idea for Y Sŵn emanated from Williams himself. The 40th anniversary of the Welsh-language channel’s launch was looming, and he saw an opportunity to craft a snapshot of recent history and reflect on Welsh society and culture, in the style of writers like James Graham (Quiz, Sherwood, Brexit: The Uncivil War).
Williams was eight years old when S4C began transmitting, and remembers well staring at the TV at the trails for the new programming in Welsh. With the proliferation of the internet, streamers with content on demand and TikTok, it’s hard to think of a world where there were only four channels. He looked forward to seeing Superted; watching the trailers and test cards of this new fourth channel as they constantly looped, hoping that loop would break and he’d see behind the scenes.
What he and director Lee Haven Jones didn’t want, however, was “a bland, dull, reverential and worthy retelling of the events surrounding the birth of the Welsh channel” – rather, something “punk, disruptive, anarchic”. Hard-wired into the DNA of Y Sŵn’s script was documentary footage of the time, and a knowing approach to what has come since.
“It felt important because making a film about establishment of a TV channel, you wanted to see images of TV from that time. I wanted to use the grammar of television to tell the story; to be playful in the way it cuts and genre shifts from thriller, romance and comedy.” Accordingly, there are screen ratio changes, subtitles and shifts from monochrome to colour: all the tools of film and TV used to tell this story and provide a potted history.
The ambition, in telling this story, was also to make people think about the relationship between Wales and the Westminster government. In 1979, Wales was promised a Welsh-language TV channel, and control over what the nation would see. The newly elected Conservatives reneged on that promise, and set in motion the events depicted in Y Sŵn. But – as Williams points out – despite devolution, decisions from Westminster still govern Wales, culture being shaped to a degree from outside the country. He wants the film to open a conversation about the struggles of the past to inform the future: how much and, conversely, how little has changed. And what, in the age of user-generated video content, is the future of Welsh language broadcasting?
Currently shepherding Y Sŵn as it opens across the country, Williams the producer could do with 12 months off, he says – “just to get back to writing”. Another horror film is in the works, as well as several other ideas currently confined to Joio, a production company creating quite a track record.
Roger Williams is eager for people to go and see his movie in the cinema itself. “It’s a communal experience,” he says, “which will hopefully encourage questions for the audience to continue to ask amongst themselves after they’ve seen it.” A reconnection to the struggles of the past to define the future.
Y Sŵn is now screening in cinemas across Wales, and will be shown on S4C later this year.
Info: www.yswn.cymru
words KEIRON SELF
Want more film?
Get reviews, previews, interviews, features and more, from Wales and beyond.