Turning up the heat and shining the spotlight on industrial strife
he furnace rises high into the overcast sky above Port Talbot, steam billowing across the landscape.
Its outline has long been synonymous with the Welsh industrial town.
Almost since the town’s inception, the steelworks has been the axis around which everything revolves – a source of pride and nostalgia, employing thousands of residents, propping up the local community and contributing billions to the Welsh economy. Once a booming steel town, Port Talbot is now an emblem of the UK’s fading industrial past. The threat of closure has loomed since the 1980s – when protests last flared over job cuts.
And discontent is beginning to bubble again today. Last year, it was announced that parts of the steelworks would be shuttered to facilitate a transformation of the existing blast furnaces to zero-emission, electric furnaces, precipitating thousands of job losses. The move was met with fury and fear among the local community. There have been bursts of protest since; industrial action has been threatened.
The Way, an explosive new BBC drama and Michael Sheen’s directorial debut, envisions a Port Talbot that erupts in the face of closures – sparking blazes across the rest of Wales and transforming the country into a revolutionary furnace. Protests spiral into violence and envelop the entire community. The military is brought in. Wales is locked down. Overnight, Welsh citizens become outlaws.
The Way follows an ordinary family, the Driscolls, caught up in the turmoil and forced to go on the run – mum Dee – Keeping Faith’s Mali Harries; dad Geoff – Gavin and Stacey’s Steffan Rhodri; elder daughter Thea – The Pact’s Sophie Melville; and son Owen – It’s A Sin’s Callum Scott Howells.
Sheen teamed up with
TAdam Curtis and Quiz writer James Graham for the project. Conceived in 2017, it has become alarmingly prescient.
“The reason we set it in Port Talbot was because of a lot of the anxieties around heavy industry,” explains 55-year-old Sheen.
“We’ve known the direction of travel with the steelworks, but obviously you hope against hope that things are going to turn around and it’s going to change.
“The first line of the piece is: ‘It happened at the steelworks’,” he continues, “and we couldn’t have imagined that in the weeks before it coming out, this would happen. It’s a fictional story, but at the same time it hopefully gives voice to the town, the community, the feelings there. It’s not just a news item. This is the life behind it. This is the community.”
Many of the extras were drawn from the local community, integral to the electricity of the riot and town hall scenes.
“They make all the difference in terms of making it believable,” Sheen says.
It is a deeply personal undertaking for Sheen. Port Talbot is his home town, and this is the actor’s first pitch at directing.
“It feels like such a personal project,” he says.
“Obviously, it’s set in the town that I grew up in, that
I live in again now. It’s about themes that I’m fascinated by, and that means a lot to me. A lot of the actors have been friends of mine for a lot of my life, so it feels very real.”
“I’ve been a fan of Michael Sheen since I knew what acting was,” enthuses Scott Howells, who rose to prominence as
Colin in It’s A Sin.
“Owen’s a lot more badass (than Colin) and what I loved doing in this role was showing people that I can do more.”
The riot scenes were a particular highlight.
“I’d never done anything like it before so I just threw myself into it,” the 24-year-old says. “At one point, I head-butted a riot shield and had to take a break.”
“The themes are very close to my heart in terms of the setting and the crisis that this family find themselves in,” says Rhodri, who grew up in Morriston, a town eight miles from Port Talbot, which he describes as a foreshadow of what the steel town could become if industry deserts it.
“But it’s not just a story about Port Talbot and the strike – that was a device in a sense to set up the story of a family on the run,” he continues.
As well as tugging at the industrial strife rippling across the area, The Way was conceived as a story that flipped migration on its head – a British family forced to desert home and relocate, their future thrown into uncertainty.
• The Way comes to BBC One on February 19.