Channel 5 Execs Explain Huw Edwards Drama Power's Surreal Ending
The executives behind 5’s new drama about Huw Edwards have opened up about the show’s surreal final moments.
Power: The Downfall Of Huw Edwards aired on Tuesday night, starring Martin Clunes as the disgraced former BBC News presenter.
While the feature-length drama opened with a recreation of Edwards announcing the news of Queen Elizabeth II’s death to the nation, in what was intended to serve as a reminder of the position of authority he held before he became embroiled in scandal, it ended with an imagined news broadcast featuring him reporting on his own fall from grace.
On Tuesday, Variety published an interview with 5 commissioners Guy Davies in which they reflected on how these book-end scenes came to be.
Testar said the opening sequence highlighted that “there is no more trusted emblem of the establishment in our society than the person who’s given the responsibility of telling the public that the Queen had died”.
Davies agreed: “[Edwards was] incredibly trusted by the public, and in a way, that trust became a bit of a metaphor in the film, because that’s also about power and the abuse of power. And that’s why I think it’s such an interesting story…”
Testar said that the idea for the final scene wasn’t in “the very first draft” but arose “pretty early on” in the creative process.
“It felt like a very important thing to end the story on, to remind the audience what the scale and detail of Edward’s crimes were,” he claimed, with Davies adding: “And being, you know, finally accountable to the public in the medium which he worked in.”
Clunes has received near-unanimous praise for his work as Edwards in Power, although the drama itself proved to be more divisive among critics.
Shortly before it aired, Edwards issued a statement slamming the drama, which the broadcaster 5 swiftly responded to.