Hi, everyone! I’ve very recently gotten interested in Welsh after seeing the crime drama Craith/Hidden. I studied Irish Gaelic for years and love languages in general so it inspired me to want to learn Welsh.
I would really, really like to see several of those S4C crime shows all in Welsh, but I can’t seem to find them anywhere. I was told they may or may not come back to Clic someday but it’s very up in the air and could be years even if they eventually do. Only the English versions are available right now. I tried buying a used UK DVD that I thought was the Welsh version of Y Gwyll s3 and had to return it because it was actually in English in spite of having the Welsh title.
Does anyone know if there’s somewhere I can currently stream or buy the Welsh language versions of these series? I’m specifically looking for Craith, Pren ar y Bryn, Un Bore Mercher, Y Gwyll (especially s3), and Byw Celwydd.
There’s a thread from 2 years ago where someone seemed to be kindly shipping their Y Gwyll DVDs around but I can’t seem to use the private messaging system for some reason and I don’t know if it’s bad etiquette to resurrect an older thread.
If anyone has any ideas for where to find these, I’d love to know! Or am I basically just out of luck unless they someday return to Clic, since they don’t seem to be available anywhere else?
I’ll tag @sara-peacock-1 here in case she has any inside information about clic, but I can’t otherwise help except to say that the messaging probably isn’t working for you yet as a brand new member (keep posting and give it some time!), and it’s not bad etiquette to revive an old thread, just bear in mind the people on it may not still be active on the forum.
I find it so very, very frustrating that it’s not possible to buy Welsh-language TV series. I understand that DVDs might not be economical because pressings would be fairly small scale, but I do not understand why I can’t buy them digitally. I mean, I want to give some of my hard earned cash to Welsh TV production companies, but they don’t want to take it. It’s infuriating.
This is something I really think that the Welsh government should facilitate, if they really want to get up to a million Welsh speakers by 2050.
Honestly, I think that applies to all media in this day and age. DVDs and other hard copy releases can certainly be a financial risk but I worked in film and TV for years, and there’s honestly no reason for any show or film not to be available digitally at this point. It’s overcomplicated by licenses and all that, which is really unfortunate because it’s never been easier or cheaper to get the videos themselves to an international audience, and it’s sad that something good can air briefly and then never be seen again.
Oh, I can relate! The best advice I can give is keep checking the usual suspects - amazon, ebay etcetera - for listings. They (Y Gwyll at least) pop up every now and then, and prices vary from around £15 to £50 per series. Depends what you’re willing to pay.
I spent months collecting all three series, and messaged one seller to be very sure the cover said “Y Gwyll, Y Trydedd Gyfres” as the description and the picture didn’t quite match up on the order confirmation page. (It was amazon conflating Hinterland and Y Gwyll as one product; the seller himself had put the right picture when advertising it.)
I now have the whole of Y Gwyll! Yay!
I might consider posting them out to people here… after I work out how to make backups just in case anything happens to them.
I 100% agree, it should not be a radical or impossible request that companies - especially smaller ones with more overheads to consider - sell digital copies of their shows and films. Not streaming, not pay-every-month-or-you-lose-access, just plain old download-and-keep.
If you can do it with music, why not video?
All that said, if Clic were to set up a paid tier with old shows, I’d subscribe! Please, please, please. Sitting in an archive somewhere are decades’ worth of soaps, dramas, films, comedies, etcetera. Just gathering dust, doing nobody any good. People, maybe especially learners, would pay to see it! Stop hoarding all the good stuff and take our money!!!
I know we have one S4C insider here. Anyone with Senedd connections? Seriously, the learner market alone is surely worth an initial investment to get something off the ground.
The licensing is the problem. Even if they wanted to permanently offer all those shows, whether they have permission to do so is sadly a whole other matter, and as far as I know, they don’t
I just hope they can coordinate with the production companies to bring them back at some point soon. It’s so wonderful to have quality crime series in a language that’s rarely seen in mainstream media.
As @firewolf has mentioned, the issue here is to do with licensing. Basically, the rights to the programme live with the company that made it. Some of these “companies” are literally one-person bands that set up in order to produce the series and then close down again afterwards. (Some are larger enterprises as well, of course, but still pretty small in comparison even to the BBC, let alone Disney et al.) S4C licenses the production under very specific regulations - linear broadcast followed by streaming rights for a period of 150 days, with repeats allowed within (I think) two years. But that’s it - it’s not possible to do more than that under the current licence without paying again.
Then there’s the question of other types of rights that are connected with the production. The actors are all on an Equity contract, the writers on one from Writers’ Guild, and any music and images from archives etc. are subject to third-party rights. All of these require a payment every time the programme is shown again outside the original licence, which makes showing repeats an extremely costly and time-consuming business.
Were we to set up a “paid tier” to Clic, for example (if we have the technology for that - I don’t know if we do), it would probably involve recruiting a few new people to our legal department, just to keep on top of the paperwork around the rights and payments.
It is extremely frustrating! You’re absolutely right that it’s a no-brainer, but it’s really, really difficult! We want nothing more than to share the archive more widely, but it’s not ours to share freely.
I think the reason they can do it with music but not video is that the people that produce the music receive mere pennies every time it is played - it’s actually quite an exploitative business model. Our present system prioritises the rights of the independent production companies around Wales, and that’s why we have such a thriving creative ecosystem for such a small country/market. We don’t want to do anything to jeopardise that.
But we’re not ignoring it - it’s a hot topic of conversation, I promise!
It’s not really licensing – streaming has been around for 18 years, so the expertise on how to write contracts that allow for this is already out there. It’s money.
I’m slightly shocked to find out that prodcos are set up, make one show, then shut down again – that’s frankly absurd. But that IP has to go somewhere, I can’t believe it would just be orphaned, so someone, somewhere owns it. And if it’s owned, it can be licensed.
Honestly, the only way that this is going to be solved is through legislation from the Senedd that forces change on the industry and provides some budget to make that change. If the industry hasn’t found a way to make streaming work over the last decade especially – through the very heights of the streaming industry when the world and its dog got on board – then it’s not going to do it now without some sort of external pressure.
Because without greater availability of Welsh TV/film, firstly we’re blocking the Welsh community from accessing its own culture*, but secondly we’re removing the opportunity for community-made resources to support Welsh learners, such as vocab lists. I’ve made myself vocab lists when watching TV, but given programs are only available for such a short time that there’d be no point sharing them with other learners because by the time I’ve seen something, it’s usually just about to become unavailable.
The technical solutions are there. What is missing is the political will and the money. And let’s face it, the money would be found if the political will was there.
*Just to say that I find it astonishing that there’s less fuss made about this. If any other area of Welsh culture were as hamstrung as TV/film is, there’d be uproar. But I feel that TV/film just isn’t as respected – in general not just in Wales – as it should be.
I accept that streaming sucks. And if S4C as a small company well aware of how much it depends on the even smaller production companies still can’t make it work fairly, fine. Streaming and ethics cannot mix. I wouldn’t be too surprised, nor disappointed as it wasn’t my preferred option from the start.
But selling downloads? My gripe here is more generalised. Digital music can be streamed, and it can be bought. When I buy a digital album, the artist gets a fair cut, just like if I bought a CD. (Especially if I buy from Bandcamp.) Mainstream film and TV just… doesn’t do this. Physical copies or subscription streaming apps, no middle ground. It doesn’t make sense.
Indie music artists these days quite often don’t even have CDs. They find it easier to break even by just selling mp3 downloads. So, if the Cymraeg film & television market isn’t large enough to make DVD production profitable, why not sell mp4 downloads?
I agree, Verity. Whilst it would be nice to have shows on S4C Clic for a bit longer, what I really want is to spend my money buying Welsh TV shows that I can watch again and again, and which won’t vanish if something happens to the service.
So, I keep my eye across the English TV industry for various reasons, and this popped up:
I’m not so familiar with where the conversations about the Welsh language sector happen, so maybe this is already being talked about elsewhere, but this is the kind of proposal that is needed.
Any levy on streamers should include a provision for S4C and Alba, and that’s not something that I’m seeing in the broader conversation, probably because the English-language industry isn’t committed to our native languages. So we need to find a way to become a part of that conversation.
But unfortunately, broadcasting isn’t devolved to Wales so Welsh Government does not have the jurisdiction there, and any funding would have to be diverted from things they do have jurisdiction over (such as education and health) - this is what has happened with Transport for Wales, for example (also not devolved).
Oh yes, it exists - but tracking down the person/people that own it (e.g. one company being bought out by another) is time consuming. It’s not impossible, just awkward and requiring person-power (often legally trained person power, which isn’t cheap).
There are many discussions (and lots of lobbying) going on behind the scenes around the media bill that’s going through UK Parliament at the moment to try to ensure parity for our minority-language broadcasting. So yes, we are part of that conversation. But I think it’s fair to say that there isn’t the same understanding the language full stop (let alone the importance of broadcasting as part of that) in Westminster.
Annoying that broadcasting isn’t devolved. I assumed it was because, well, there’s a pretty big language and cultural component there that seems like a slam dunk for control by the Senedd. As you say, though, I don’t think Westminster either understands or really cares all that much about native language TV programming, whether thats in Welsh or Gaelic.
And yes, I used to campaign on IP-related issues, and the whole rights thicket that grows up when companies dissolve and sell their assets etc etc is just appalling. Again, something that ought to be more tightly regulated, imho.
I’m sure there is a lot of behind the scenes stuff going on, but I wonder how we – as in Welsh speakers and learners – could get involved. I feel a bit like emailing my English MP in an English constituency about access to Welsh TV and the preservation of Welsh culture might make his head explode a little!!
Obviously it’s very complicated, and we appreciate every effort that is being made. It helps a lot to know that people at S4C are talking about these issues.
We’re not trying to nag, just make it known that there is a ton of enthusiasm for Cymraeg content, new or old. If there is ever anything a small but passionate army of learners can do to assist, you know where to find us!
I managed to find all 3 series of Y Gwyll (cymraeg) on e-bay, I have also bought both series of Gwlad yr astra gwyn from e-bay so they are there, you just have to persevere. I don’t believe that any of the others that you mention have been released on DVD but I’d be happy to be proved wrong
Streaming companies, such as Netflix, are licensing behemoth’s. They can afford to have so many show’s and movie’s on the platform for so long because they have the money to do so, but they’re not their forever, they still have to license them for a period of time, which is exactly what S4C does, once that time runs out, they have to remove it from the platform or relicense. And that kind of thing can get expensive, because of how many people are involved.
Even for standard repeats (And don’t quote me on this, my agent’s deal with the money side of things) under the standard Equity PACT agreement, for each subsequent use purchased by the main UK channels (such as S4C), they have to pay the talent around 60% of the original fee, and that % goes up every year since the show was made. For example, to do a repeat of a show produced in 1985, the actors would earn around 300% of their original fee.
So if I play a tiny role and earn say… £1k. Then a TV Channel like S4C want to license a repeat, they’d have to pay me at least £600 from that, depending when it was made. Then take into account how many actors, writers, producers etc are involved in the process, and their fees are much more than £1k. It gets expensive.
I mean Netflix was paying $100 million just to license “Friends”.
We’re more talking about the inability to buy shows, either as downloads of DVDs, rather than wanting unending streaming. Though 150 days on S4C does feel a little short, no one’s expecting to get everything for free forever.
And yes, this is basically all about money – Netflix and the other streamers have a boatload of money that the domestic industry does not. Indeed, if you’re in the TV industry you’ll be aware of how much production costs have gone up, and how hard that’s making it for UK prodcos to be able to actually make the TV they want to make. Mr Bates would not get made now. Wolf Hall S2 nearly didn’t get made and had to be radically rewritten to make it cheaper. And the chances of any similar shows getting made now are slim to none.
The UK industry is really struggling, because American money, amongst other things, has pushed costs up and UK budgets haven’t kept pace.
This is why I think that there needs to be government intervention and some sort of budget allocated to supporting the industry, with some money ringfenced for making Welsh TV and film more available to buy. We shouldn’t have to hunt everything down on eBay and, indeed, buying stuff secondhand doesn’t help put money in prodcos pockets.
This particularly frustrates me. I very much want to support the production directly and would happily pay a good amount to download 1080p digital copies straight from the source. But, for instance, even with the bilingual version of Craith/Hidden, the only options on the market right now are used DVDs, which 1) are significantly lower quality than downloads, and 2) don’t allow me to give my money to the people who actually made the show. And that’s just the international version, with the all-Welsh one not even existing commercially.
I made several films 20+ years ago and the DVDs are no longer available because I had a small, super indie production company and after 2 rounds of DVD production, it wasn’t viable to keep making hard copies since the demand died down. But recently for some reason I’ve been getting emails here and there from people asking where they can buy some of those films because they don’t just want secondhand discs from ebay, so I’m setting up an option to make digital copies available. There are definitely logistics involved, but it’s absolutely doable.
A huge problem is corporate greed and their obsession with DRM. I loathe DRM and will never put that sort of restriction on my own work. If you buy something, you should own it and be able to use it however you want. Many good shows are available on Amazon, Acorn, etc. but I will never pay to “buy” copies of something that requires the corporation’s dedicated app to watch and can disappear at any time. DRM doesn’t stop pirating; it just turns away people who would otherwise likely pay for the product. If production companies started offering their own DRM-free downloads, I would be buying digital copies of shows right and left. But that’s a whole other discussion lol.
