One Friday last month a demonstration was held outside the Port Talbot steelworks in south Wales, protesting the closure of the site’s two main blast furnaces. The demonstration was peaceful, passed off without incident and earned a brief mention on the evening news. But suppose for a moment that it had gone the other way. Suppose it spiralled into violence and sparked a full-blown Welsh rebellion. In which case, Port Talbot is no longer a fading industrial town. It’s a hotbed of revolution; a signpost to the future.
This, in a nutshell, is the premise of The Way, a boisterous BBC drama about a parallel Britain that’s just a shuffle step from our own. It’s a tale of civil war and family strife, a series that installs a militarised hard border between England and Wales and effectively turns all the Celts into outlaws. It used to be that people visited border town Hay-on-Wye to buy books. Now they come seeking shelter and a secret route into England.
