The Welsh tourist board WOW Wales has never been busier, which is unfortunate because its staff are comprehensively useless. Sally Phillips’s Elaine Gibbons presides over a Cardiff office where press officer Elis James’s Nez can’t spell “Welcome”, field operative Mike Bubbins’s Wyn believes dragons are real, and IT support consists of unplugging everything and plugging it back in. Shot in the same loose, semi-improvised style as Scot Squad, the first series strings together departmental vignettes; by the second, plots spill across episodes and the teams start invading each other’s turf, reflecting the real-life chaos of a Six Nations campaign, a Port Talbot Banksy and the rise of DNA tourism.
Writers Tudur Owen, Sian Harries and Gareth Gwynn mine local details for punchlines: bilingual signage that apologises in advance, valleys towns petitioning to twinned with Narnia, a visitor centre that celebrates Wales’ “second best views”. Guest cameos from rugby legends and weatherman Derek Brockway arrive just long enough to be undermined by the staff. During lockdown the cast regrouped for a BBC Radio Wales special, coordinating stay-away slogans over glitchy Zoom calls and proving that even a pandemic couldn’t make the board competent. The show ended in 2019 after two brief series, leaving the Welsh economy marginally safer.
Production Details
BBC One / 2 Seasons / 12 Episodes / 2018
Created by: Sian Harries, Tudur Owen, Gareth Gwynn
Writer(s): Tudur Owen
Main Cast
Sally Phillips as Elaine Gibbons
Tudur Owen as Gwilym
Elis James as Nez
Mali Ann Rees as Kara
Mike Bubbins as Wyn
Mari Beard as Charlotte
Leroy Brito as Rob
Sara Gregory as Amy
Siôn Pritchard as Mark
Gareth Gwynn as Radio DJ
Tom Price as Jon
Remy Beasley as Hari
