This week BBC One showed a single drama,
Framed, a story about the use of an old slate mine in North Wales to store the National Gallery's treasures. I don't want to talk here about the piece's quality as a drama per se - what I'm specifically interested in is that the film was cast with South Walian actors, speaking in South Walian accents, while being set in North Wales - a fact which has caused
some controversy.
Framed was a network drama, aiming at a network audience, most of whom would simply not be aware of the difference between South and North Walian accents. And while there are no doubt very talented North Walian actresses, I can't think of any who would be familiar to a mainstream BBC One audience in the way Eve Myles is. So for the Beeb in London, it's straightforward - cast Trevor Eve as the handsome incomer (obligatory in any network drama set in Wales), cast unmistakably talented and Welsh Eve Myles as the co-lead, you've got two BBC One faces and away you go.
Except that it leaves at least some people in Wales feeling that 'their' BBC is a distant, external institution that has little to do with them - and that, as
one witty Facebook commentator put it, most TV gets made by people who see think of Britain as a kind of decorative green fringe that they can just about see on the far side of the M25.
Where does that leave theatre - and especially a theatre that is charged with being a national theatre? Is cultural accuracy - in terms of accent or dialect, say - something that's core to the work, or is just icing on the cake?