Is drama Power: The Downfall of Huw Edwards really 'too soon'? I argue it's a stark study of an imbalance of power

Whenever television dramatises a recent scandal, the same response quickly surfaces: it’s “too soon”. But the phrase can sometimes feel like a polite way of saying we’d rather not confront our discomfort just yet. After all, awkward truths become far easier to process once they’ve been safely consigned to the past.

Given the personality at the heart of it, Power: the Downfall of Huw Edwards (airing on 24 March on 5) is bound to be the latest drama to find itself at the centre of this debate.

Dramatising the fall of the once-trusted newsreader was always likely to provoke such a reaction. For years, Edwards appeared as solid and familiar as the desk he sat behind. Yet waiting doesn’t necessarily make such stories more respectful. Time alone can’t solve the ethical question that defines this case. If anything, facing it now may help keep our gaze on the wrongdoing rather than allowing it to fade from view.

Arguably, what matters more is tone rather than timing. The risk with a project such as this is that it exploits a traumatic situation for entertainment or humanises its central figure to the point where it feels like mitigation. Thankfully, the focus here is less on any remorse Edwards may have felt after his disgrace and more on the controlling grip the presenter – played with quiet menace by Martin Clunes – exerted over the 17-year-old boy he groomed.

The result is a stark study in the imbalance of power, with vulnerable youngster Ryan (Osian Morgan) depicted as someone caught in the psychological leverage Edwards wielded as a person of influence.

At times, the drama captures that manipulation in small but palpably distressing detail: in private exchanges, Edwards repeatedly addresses the teenager as “baby”, a tone grotesquely out of step with the sober image he projected each night to viewers. In other moments, he berates and bullies his prey, steadily eroding Ryan’s self-worth and distancing him from his mother, Carys (Sian Reese-Williams), who fears she is losing her son.

The story also explores the deeper impropriety beyond those first headlines. Early press reports focused on Edwards’s relationship with a then-unnamed teenager, but investigators later unearthed worrying online conversations with another man between late 2020 and mid-2021. Those messages were found to include illegal images of children, some classified as being in the most serious categories. The discovery prompted a police investigation into Edwards’s internet activity, which eventually saw him admit offences relating to indecent images of minors.

The portrayal of these events is heightened by Clunes’s casting. For decades, the actor has been widely associated with warm roles, most notably the gruff but lovable GP in Doc Martin. That familiarity functions almost as a comfort blanket: audiences are instinctively reassured by his presence. Here, though, as Edwards’s predatory behaviour becomes more overt, the effect is deliberately upsetting – as though the blanket is fraying and unravelling before our eyes.

Edwards himself, of course, was once the embodiment of trust, something we’re reminded of in a recreation of his announcement of the death of Queen Elizabeth II in September 2022. Seeing a similarly recognisable figure in the form of Clunes deliver that moment only sharpens the point about how quickly such faith can shatter.

It’s a theme that’s returned to when, in a striking dramatic device, Edwards is shown once again seated behind the news desk - only this time, he’s reading a report about his own conviction. It’s a narrative flight of fancy but an effective one: a bracing reminder of the drama’s chief preoccupation with the gulf that can exist between public persona and private reality.

Power: The Downfall of Huw Edwards will air on Tuesday 24 March at 9pm on 5.

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