PORT IN ASTORM

THE WAY Michael Sheen’s allegorical drama of a working-class Welsh family on the run.

1 THERE’S ACREATIVE DREAM TEAM

Three-part drama The Way unites idiosyncratic documentarian Adam Curtis (The Power of Nightmares), prolific playwright/screenwriter James Graham (Sherwood) and actor Michael Sheen, here making his directorial debut. ‘The idea came before the pandemic and was very simple,’ says Sheen. ‘What if a British family were doing what a Syrian family were doing at the time, suddenly having to leave their home and go on this dangerous journey? Adam is very good about layers of power and would challenge us to keep things believable at all times. Once we started talking about the scope, we needed a writer and James seemed the perfect fit.’

2 FAMILY IS AT ITS HEART

The Driscolls are riven by unresolved resentments. Geoff (Steffan Rhodri) is a shop steward at the steelworks, Dee (Mali Harries) the engine of the community, Thea (Sophie Melville) a copper and Owen (Callum Scott Howells) a lost soul drifting into trouble. ‘Each has a version of past events incompatible with the others,’ explains Sheen, who cameos as Geoff’s late father and ‘legendary figure’ Denny. ‘They’re a fractured family forced to come together because they have to escape, but only if those festering stories are brought into the light.’

3 IT ISN’T PO-FACED

The Driscolls go on the run, hunted by Luke Evans’ mercenary, after ‘an inciting incident’ at the steelworks turns the town into a crucible of post-industrial conflict and culture wars, haunted by ghosts of past uprisings. And yet there is always humour, with Sheen describing the tone as ‘a cross between The Royle Family and Apocalypse Now’ in its blend of big ideas in a domestic setting. ‘We wanted watching it to feel like living in this post-Brexit culture where you’re never quite sure if you’re in a horror film or a sitcom.’

‘It’s a cross between The Royle Family and Apocalypse Now’

MICHAEL SHEEN

4 IT WAS A HOMECOMING FOR SHEEN

As soon as the setting was determined as Port Talbot, Sheen knew he had to direct, and he wrangled hundreds of committed locals for crowd scenes ranging from a highly charged townhall meeting to riots on the hottest day of the year. ‘It has been a real treat to film a story in Wales that is both actually about Wales and something new,’ he says. ‘Although, while people were excited something on this scale was happening, I knew it would eventually start to be: “Michael Sheen has shut bloody Station Road down again, I can’t get to Tesco!”’

5 IT OFFERS AMUCH-NEEDED DOSE OF OPTIMISM

‘Sometimes things get so far apart that they can snap,’ muses Sheen. ‘We ask whether it’s possible to heal division and whether we can let go of the old stories to imagine something new? Our piece is very optimistic in both those respects, but it’s not providing the answers. Instead, it’s exploring the questions and offering some context, because what is true of the Driscolls could be seen as being true of the country.’

THE WAY IS COMING SOON TO BBC1.