Channel 5 bosses have defended their drama Power: The Downfall of Huw Edwards from criticism by the disgraced presenter – who claimed that producers made “no attempt to check” the truth with him.
The feature-length drama, which aired on Channel 5 on Tuesday (24 March) and was made by production company Wonderhood, dramatises the events leading up to Edwards pleading guilty to making indecent images of children in 2024, including the grooming of a 17-year-old.
Martin Clunes stars as Edwards, 64, with the TV film ending with a credit noting that Edwards was approached for comment for the film but declined.
Instead, Edwards put out a statement condemning the drama hours before its release, claiming that the producers had “belatedly” contacted him for comment and “made no attempt to check with me the truth of any aspect of their narrative before going ahead with the production”.
In a new interview with Variety, Channel 5 commissioners Guy Davies and Paul Testar responded to Edwards’ statement. “Well, we didn’t make it as a collaboration with him, had never intended to,” Davies said.
While working on the drama, writer Mark Burt spoke to Edwards’ anonymous victim, who is anonymised in the show under the name “Ryan Davies” and played by former Emmerdale actor Osian Morgan. Edwards was never charged with a criminal offence in relation to the victim of the grooming.
Responding to Edwards' criticism ahead of the show's release, Channel 5 said that Power: The Downfall Of Huw Edwards was “based on extensive interviews with the victim, his family, the journalists who revealed his story, text exchanges between the victim and Edwards, and court reporting”. They also claimed that the allegations in the film were put to Edwards via his solicitors six weeks before transmission.
Asked if the commissioners had anything to add to the Channel's statement, Davies said: “I don’t think so. Because I think that statement is about our position, really, that [the film] was based on the research, and that ourselves as the channel, our legal team Wonderhood’s legal team, were all happy that this has been made in accordance with Ofcom and the Broadcasting Code, which I know Huw has mentioned in his statement, and that we were very clear to give all of the allegations that would be looked at in the film in ample time, when it came to the Ofcom rules, which is what we did. So I think that’s it.”
In his original response, Edwards shared that he planned to produce his “own account of these terrible events”. When Variety asked the pair if Channel 5 would be interested in airing Edwards' version, Davies simply replied: “No.”
In his two-star review of Power: The Downfall of Huw Edwards, The Independent's Adam White wrote that the show was “the kind of rush-job TV lobotomy that satisfies nothing but a viewer’s baser instincts”.
“Likely out of legal necessity, Power doesn’t illuminate as much as it recites, running down the gory basics of a too-recent news story that – at least based on Edwards’s peeved statement – isn’t resolved enough to sufficiently narrativise,” he wrote.
