When it comes to Welsh female cultural icons, not many immediately spring to mind. Shirley Bassey’s an obvious one, Ruth Jones, Ruth Madoc and Cerys Matthews, possibly. Charlotte Church, at a pinch. But for those in the know – more precisely, Welsh TV viewers – Eve Myles has over the past decade or so definitely entered the pantheon, and this adopted Welshman would wholeheartedly agree.
With her gap-toothed grin and boggly eyes, Eve might struggle to capture major roles in Hollywood but she has carved a very popular niche in UK television, with offshoots in the US sci-fi sector. I arrived in Cardiff too late to see her in the long-running BBC Wales Noughties drama series Belonging but by the end of the decade she was a regular on network TV.
I never watched her servant girl performance in ITV’s Victoria, but did dip more than a toe into the waters of a star-studded 2008 production of Little Dorrit, in which Myles played Maggie. Three years earlier, I was most definitely tuned to BBC1 when, in another nineteenth-century maid’s outfit, Myles opened the door to Charles Dickens himself (as you do) in a spooky 2005 Doctor Who story, The Unquiet Dead, set in Cardiff. Her character– like that of many Doctor Who supporting actors - proved heroic, if doomed, but she won over showrunner Russell T Davies to the extent that he wrote her a major part in the spin-off Torchwood. She would never look back.
While John Barrowman’s lead character Captain Jack was a tad cartoonish, Eve Myles’ Gwen provided the key everyday human heartbeat to the series, and crucially she was indubitably and unapologetically Welsh! We followed her transition from humble cop to kick-ass, alien-catching, conspiracy-battling heroine, but behind it all was her emotional dilemma of risking life and limb as a field agent whilst trying to maintain her relationship with an uncomprehending Rhys and, towards the end, her baby. Trouble had a nasty habit of stalking her domestic bliss in their coastal cottage and Torchwood didn’t shy away from some genuinely powerful scenes. It all ended with a big-budget US-UK co-production in 2011 and Eve Myles now had the attention of viewers and casting agents alike.
She was the main draw in the BBC’s Baker Boys about a village coming together to save their local bakery, but for all the life-affirming storylines, it was a little bit boring for me. More appealing was 2013’s Frankie, which transferred Eve Myles across the Severn to Bristol to play the eponymous lead. She seemed to revel in the part as a brow-beaten but dedicated district nurse with a quirky, music-loving streak out of the uniform, and I’d hoped for a second series. Sadly, Lucy Gannon didn’t write another.
Fortunately Eve wasn’t off the screen for long. When ITV’s Broadchurch returned for its much-anticipated second run, I was delighted to discover that she had an important role supporting those of established stars David Tennant and Olivia Colman, fleshing out Hardy’s (Tennant) back story. OK, so it was the weakest of the series’ three runs, but that wasn’t Eve Myles’ fault.
More recently she has popped up in Cold Feet, sadly no longer a must-see in this household, and was briefly the unlikely lover of Norman Scott in A Very English Scandal, the Beeb’s dramatisation of the Jeremy Thorpe controversy which hit the headlines in the Seventies. I suppose it was inevitable she got the part given it was Russell T Davies providing the screenplay – and a delightfully tongue-in-cheek screenplay it was, too.
However Eve has once again proved she can successfully front a series, in BBC Wales’ Keeping Faith. Part crime drama, part romance, part ode to the Carmarthenshire countryside, the star filled the screen in almost every scene. The camera would frequently linger lovingly on teary eyes and quivering lips, all to a dreamy soundtrack from Amy Wadge. To be honest, this became a bit tiresome but was mercifully reduced for the second series last year. I suppose the lengthy dialogue-free sequences were necessary given that Keeping Faith was also made in the Welsh language, thus keeping repeat scenes to a minimum. It would also have cut Eve’s workload given she had to learn Welsh specially. Still, it was a surprise hit across the UK in either language, garnering millions of viewers and online streams, and also made a famous co-star of her yellow mac!
Given our own West Wales associations, we have it on good authority that Eve and her Faith co-star and real-life hubby Bradley Freegard are genuinely nice people, but that, unlike Angie, even Eve doesn’t provide Welsh cakes for those working on her house. I suppose nobody’s perfect….
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