Entertainment
Netflix to launch first ever Welsh series as streamer reveals plans to air crime drama-Alistair McGeorge-Entertainment – Metro
The streaming giant is making moves.
The streamer has the rights to Dal y Mellt (Picture: S4C)
Netflix is set to air its first ever Welsh language drama Dal y Mellt.
The streaming giant has bought the license for the S4C hit crime thriller which follows a group of misfits coming together for a heist.
Dal y Mellt – which translates as Catch The Lightning and is an adaptation of Iwan ‘Iwcs’ Roberts’ debut novel – dropped as a box set on S4C Clic and BBC iPlayer in October.
The show is set to air as six hour-long episodes from April 2023, and the streaming giant has said it hopes to help ‘promote and preserve the Welsh language’ through the series.
The programme is set in Cardiff, Soho, Porthmadog and Holyhead, and Netflix’s Benjamin King has revealed how content made in – and about – Wales ‘travels extremely well’ to worldwide audiences.
Speaking to the Welsh Affairs Committee at Westminster, he said: ‘I think within the UK, Wales has consistently been the location for many of our most well-known and best loved shows.
The show launched as a boxset on iPlayer last year (Picture: S4C)
Sex Education is filmed in England and Wales (Picture: Jon Hall/Netflix)
‘Most people are familiar with Sex Education and many people know as well that certain scenes from The Crown were filmed in Wales, but we also have a suite of other content that was made in Wales for example, our film Havoc, which is the largest feature film ever produced there.’
The crime drama follows Carbo, a young car thief played by Gwïon Morris Jones, who gets caught up in a dubious family in North Wales.
Actor and writer Roberts, who previously starred in Welsh soap opera Pobl y Cwm, adapted his own novel for the small screen and the series was first aired in the autumn of 2022 with comparisons to BBC’s Peaky Blinders and Guy Ritchie heist films.
In a statement, S4C CEO Sian Doyle said: ‘To sell a Welsh-language only series to a major global streamer like Netflix sets out our ambition to take Welsh talent and language to the world and creates further exciting opportunities for S4C.’
Netflix’s acquisition comes as there is an increasingly demand for foreign language programmes, with Nordic noir shows The Killing and The Bridge doing well, while South Korean series Squid Game took the world by storm when it launched on the platform in 2021.
Wales, too, is proving popular with Amazon finding huge success with documentary series Welcome To Wrexham following Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney’s takeover of the football club.
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