Hinterland

Hinterland, known in Welsh as Y Gwyll (“The Dusk”), is a bilingual Welsh detective drama created by Ed Thomas and Ed Talfan that premiered on Welsh-language broadcaster S4C on 29 October 2013, before airing in English on BBC One Wales and BBC Four. Produced by Fiction Factory in co-production with S4C and BBC Wales, the series ran for three series comprising 13 feature-length episodes of approximately 90 minutes each, concluding in 2016. Uniquely, every scene was filmed twice—once entirely in Welsh, once in English—creating two distinct versions of the same story, with the bilingual Welsh/English cut also broadcast domestically alongside a fully Welsh-language edition for S4C. The production, raised over two and a half years on a tight £4.2 million budget, formed part of a wider commitment by BBC Cymru Wales to bring more Welsh language, life, and culture to mainstream BBC channels, and went on to be shown in over 150 countries worldwide, including via Netflix in North America.

The series centres on DCI Tom Mathias (Richard Harrington, Bleak House, MI-5), a brilliant but troubled detective who has relocated from the Metropolitan Police in London to Aberystwyth, seeking some form of redemption or escape from a past the series only gradually reveals. Mathias lives an insular, isolated existence in a caravan in the middle of nowhere, his depressive, brooding nature drawing frequent comparisons to Nordic noir protagonists like Kurt Wallander—The Guardian’s Vicky Frost memorably remarked that she had yet to encounter “a more darkly brooding detective on TV.” Mathias is supported by DI Mared Rhys (Mali Harries, Foyle’s War), his capable next-in-command; DS Siân Owens (Hannah Daniel, Casualty); and DC Lloyd Elis (Alex Harries, Torchwood), rounding out a small, tightly-knit investigative team who work under the watchful, faintly menacing Chief Superintendent Brian Prosser (Aneirin Hughes, Judge John Deed), whose presence looms over proceedings from the shadows.

Hinterland has been widely and consistently described as “Scandi-noir in Wales” or “Celtic noir,” drawing deliberate stylistic inspiration from acclaimed Scandinavian crime dramas such as Forbrydelsen (The Killing), The Bridge, and Wallander—sharing their bleak visual palette, moody, slow-building tension, and use of landscape as an almost character-like presence within the narrative. The vast, stark, and beautiful terrain of Ceredigion becomes integral to the show’s atmosphere, its harsh beauty providing an unsettling backdrop against which brutal crimes and long-buried community secrets play out. Wales Arts Review praised the series as “shot with real intelligence; simple, subtle and with both eyes focused on the feeding of the atmospheric cloud over the piece”—a description that captures the show’s commitment to mood and visual storytelling over fast-paced plotting.

Each series presents Mathias and his team investigating a new set of cases—typically depicted across feature-length episodes that allow complex, slow-burning mysteries to develop fully—unearthing hate crimes, hidden family secrets, and the dark undercurrents running beneath the surface of seemingly peaceful rural Welsh communities. This focus on community-level trauma and buried history, rather than pure procedural puzzle-solving, aligns Hinterland with the broader “Nordic noir” tradition it consciously emulates, prioritising psychological depth and atmospheric dread over the gentler, more reassuring tone of traditional cosy crime.

Filming took place extensively around Aberystwyth and the wider Ceredigion region, including locations such as Devil’s Bridge and Borth. Notably, the police station featured throughout the series is the former Queens Hotel in Aberystwyth—closed as a hotel and repurposed as the town’s actual police station until the mid-1990s—though the entrance used for filming was located on the opposite side of the building from the real police station entrance, adding an extra layer of local authenticity for those familiar with the town. The production’s success in showcasing Ceredigion’s genuinely dramatic landscape helped put Wales firmly on the international crime drama map, directly inspiring subsequent Welsh-language crime dramas such as Craith (Hidden), which continued exploring similarly dark, atmospheric territory in the years following Hinterland’s conclusion.

Critical reception was strong throughout the show’s run, with reviewers consistently praising its atmospheric direction, strong central performances (particularly Harrington’s brooding lead turn), and the confidence of its bilingual production model. The series’ three-series run, concluding in December 2016, cemented Hinterland’s reputation as a landmark achievement in Welsh television drama—proof that authentically regional, Welsh-language-rooted crime drama could achieve genuine international acclaim and distribution, setting a template for subsequent Welsh noir productions and demonstrating that BBC Cymru Wales’s investment in bilingual, culturally specific storytelling could yield both critical success and substantial global reach.

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