Anyone want to discuss "Un Bore Mercher" (S4C)? - warning - might contain spoilers

Phew! even with the English subtitles I’m still confused!

Funny to see DI Williams bundled into the cells again. :slight_smile: Nice one Terry. But now there’s no proof so maybe DIW will wriggle out of it and Terry will be out of a job. But I think he’s better off out of it.

Well if Evan & Faith manage to stay out of jail, maybe they Terry & Bethan can get together and set up an organic smallholding with holiday b&bs on site. Won’t make much money but will be more satisfying than the law and estate agenting…Terry obviously likes fresh air and growing things might cheer up Bethan. Evan will be on permanent muckspreading duties for several years to atone for his sins…:slight_smile:

Well done to those who spotted Parry for a wrongun.

Still lots of unanswered questions AFAIAC:

Steve apparently took out a ‘contract’ on Gayle Reardon presumably to get her off Faith’s back. ( Wonder where he got the money?).

Meanwhile, Gayle had apparently taken Faith’s side against Parry because he was setting her up (not clear about that…she’s a crime boss…not much need of setting up I wouldnt have thought). And now Faith thinks she can afford to pay her off anyway out of Evan’s ill gotten gains. Steve cancel that contract…Cerys, dont click that SEND icon…oops too late!

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Well, I can’t claim credit. Richard Elfin always seems to get type cast as a baddy! One day S4C will totally throw me by having him play an absolutely lovely person and I’ll be expecting him to turn out bad all through, which he never will!
I agree re-loose ends.

  • where has Evan been hiding?
  • is he still involved with baddies?
  • will Faith be willing to take Evan back or prefer Steve?
  • was Arthur working for Evan? and/or the Glynns and/or Reardon?

oh I assumed that Parry and Morgan were blackmailing him into working for them…clink or work for us.

Mam yng nghyfraith looked dead on the sofa didn’t she?
I could hardly believe that Tom didn’t know, but it seems he didn’t. Think I would have been a touch less compassionate about that in his shoes. Cerys timed that for the maximum amount of damage, didn’t she? Knowing that he was coming in to court and then bringing up the subject of Evan’s real dad. A big risk, seeing how her fortunes are bound up with those of the Howell’s family, but a testament to her bond with Faith (and possibly her need to win at all costs? She seems quite driven).

Arthur’s moves led me to think he’s a CID chappie or something, deep undercover, on the trail of bent coppers in Swansea. I know he said he learnt his moves in the army, but I didn’t find that line convincing.

Yes, I agree. Even if he’s just his normal slightly bewildered self, he did say that he should have been brave and gone to prison, presumably instead of becoming their lackey. [quote=“mikeellwood, post:102, topic:10116”]
Wonder where he got the money?)
[/quote]
Was it the money he got for the ‘goods’ he was picking up for Gail Reardon that he gave to the Glynns? Using her own money to kill her as it were? She was still alive when she was issuing orders to Parry in the car, so they aren’t in a hurry. But it seems that Reardon was the mover and shaker behind the Abertawe wrong uns.
And then Evan wonders out of the house with armfuls of children and a big grin on his face! :astonished::astonished::astonished:
Didn’t feel like the end to me. Could have done with another episode to wrap stuff up! Maybe there is another series to come. I’m all for it if there is!

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Just in case anyone is interested, something I happened upon, which shows personnel links between Dr Who, Torchwood & Un Bore Mercher -

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Yes, just possibly anoother series in it…with Terry at least promoted to sergeant (that is if he does’t fancy organic farming cum b&b host…)

I was amused at Cerys’s reaction to Lisa turning up near the end. Hope they make Lisa into a more 3 dimensional character in any future series.

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Arthur: I had wondered if he’d come back damaged from Iraq or somewhere which might explain his alcoholic delinquency.

But I think I like your idea better. After all his recent behaviour is out of character with his earlier behaviour & I don’t think a damaged person could recover that quickly.

If he was working undercover investigating Swansea CID, knowing that they’d had dealings with Evan, he might have got close to both Evan and Faith to see where it led.

I think it’s still possible that Evan hasn’t been a really bachgen drwg & and that all he did was as informer / agent for Parry. I don’t think we have to believe what Parry and Gayle said about him.

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She seems to be stuck as a perpetual babysitter! Faith just gets her coat and leaves without a ‘Would you mind?’.
I can’t help thinking she would be happy company for Terry.

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I’ve been re-watching some of the earlier episodes to see if I can pull some of the still slightly mysterious (at least to me) strands together.

In episode 3 (I think), it’s made clear that there is no love lost between DI Williams and DCI Parry. So at that stage at least, they weren’t in cahoots as far as illicit or illegal goings-on were concerned.
Williams is dishonest, but maybe only in the sense of doing anything to convict people she “knows” to be guilty. Of course in real life, we know of miscarriages of justice which have happened that way.

It would appear that Parry and DS Morgan are financially corrupt, although it’s possible that the money was only part of a “sting” type operation (that had probably gone wildly out of control), and they wanted it back to try to cover their tracks. Anyway, by the end, Williams appears to be in cahoots with them, but I presume that’s only in return for them letting her off the hook for the Alpay car crash.

Talking of Alpay, knowing now that Cerys has eclectic tastes, I’m wondering if she and Alpay were an “item” at one stage. It seems to be hinted at in ep. 3 or 4.

And I was reminded of the deal (which we saw in flashback) between Evan and Glynn. If we take it at face value then given that he must know what sort of a man Glynn is, it would mean he had become, or was about to become, a “bent brief”. However, it’s also (just) possible that he was doing it as some sort of undercover operation, to find out more about Glynn’s business, and maybe help put him out of business altogether (working with Parry…?). Anyway, again it seems to have got out of control.

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NB i read somewhere that this,like Y Gwyll is being shot in English as well, presmably for the ‘dark’ crime slot onBBC4. If we are still bemused by then, maybe seeing it in English will help?

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Apparently BBC1 in Wales in 2018.

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I bet it still ends up on BBC4 on a Saturday at 9.00 p.m., drama noire, foreign series slot as Y Gwyll did!!

Quite possibly… :slight_smile: I was just going off the end of this item: http://www.walesonline.co.uk/lifestyle/tv/broadchurch-star-eve-myles-loved-13655616 (which is quite interesting anyway, as it’s about Eve Myles learning Welsh).

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Well watched it through to the end, and I’m still (at least a bit) confused.
But that’s good - rather than it all being handed to us on a plate. :slight_smile:

Hopefully enough loose ends remaining to justify a second series - well, I hope so anyway.

Now about to continue getting fixes of “Cymru Noir” with my boxed set of “A Mind to Kill” (all those heavily-dropped pre-Christmas hints were not in vain! :slight_smile: ). Only English on the DVDs unfortunately, although (ahead of its time) it was also made in both English and Welsh.

Now watched the pilot and 1st 2 episodes. Goodness it’s dark isn’t it? I’d seen a few episodes when it was on Channel 5 back in the day, but I’d forgotten exactly what it was like.

Interesting how police dramas have changed since then. The biggest difference I noticed was how big their murder team is. Masses of people milling about, compared with the few involved in e.g. Un Bore Mercher or Y Gwyll. It might possibly reflect reduced budgets in both police and TV drama. But it also might reflect the difference in styles. The old style was all fact and action based…clues, detection, proof. Modern dramas are more about personalities and psychology, etc. I don’t know if that’s good or bad. Perhaps it just is.

Also, “A Mind to Kill” looks dated in the obvious respects: the old cars, phones, computers, police uniforms. On the other hand, as expected, the quality of the acting and the stories is first class.

The worst kind of ‘bad’ scientists pick only the results which support the theories they ‘know’ are true! In medical research that can kill! In other fields,years of work are wasted. Anyone who has never hear of phlogiston, look it up. I’m not sure anyone fixed results, but the absolute belief in phlogiston held science back for years!

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I’ve been wondering whether the English-language (or bilingual?) version of this will use the same theme song(s).

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I feel sure that I have heard a bit of the English language version song (I gave you all my heart?), but cant find it now.

I hope that it will retain some Cymreag, like Hinterland did, to set the scene.

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Sorry! I’ve come late to the party. I’ve watched everything up to date with Welsh subtitles, and then again with English subtitles for my husband who was really getting into the show with me trying to translate quick bits from the Welsh for him.

@siaronjames - I had actually meant to send you a PM, but then I thought that other people from this thread might be interested in your answer:

I absolutely LOVE the music from Un Bore Mercher! Do you know if there are any plans to release any of the music in some form so that people like me could download it or buy it somehow? I’ve had “Rhoiais i nghalon” (hope I spelled that right) running in my head for days! The words are so beautiful and the melody so haunting. I also like the fact that the singer enunciates very clearly, so I can understand every word.

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