This month marks 20 years since the first BBC Wales-made episode of Doctor Who was broadcast, effectively creating the Welsh drama hub we enjoy today. Aside from a Children in Need special and a TV movie starring Paul McGann, the series had been off-air since 1989 until it was revived in 2005 by the then Controller of BBC One, Lorraine Heggessey.

Production was bestowed on Julie Gardner, Head of Drama for BBC Wales, under the penmanship of Russell T Davies.

It wasn’t the first network show to come from Wales – successes in the 1980s included The Life and Times of David Lloyd George, starring Philip Madoc, and The District Nurse, starring Nerys Hughes. Doctor Who, however, was a very different beast and its technical requirements meant an overhaul of the post-production department in Cardiff, with all-new edit suites and a dubbing theatre.

It was an attempt to revive family viewing for a Saturday night and its instant success was far bigger than everyone’s expectations.

By the summer of 2005, two more series had been commissioned, plus a couple of spin-offs – The Sarah Jane Adventures for CBBC and Torchwood for BBC Three. By January of the following year, the drama department in Wales was employing several crews all year round. That’s when I made the journey from Television Centre in London to Broadcasting House in Llandaff to join the expanding team that looked after the brand and marketing of the shows.

I’d planned to spend just a year in Wales, the country where I was born and had left when I was a child. But the success of the Who family of shows grew and grew, and I ended up staying another year, then another.

It became clear that we were carving out a niche as a centre of excellence for drama

When Merlin also came to Wales, followed by Sherlock, it became clear that the country was carving out a niche as a centre of excellence for drama. Before leaving the BBC, Head of Drama Jane Tranter arranged for the continuing drama Casualty to move production from Bristol to Cardiff, which saw the development of vast studios at Roath Lock in Cardiff Bay. They officially opened in the summer of 2011 and also housed Welsh-language soap Pobol Y Cwm, Doctor Who and a reboot of Upstairs Downstairs, written by Heidi Thomas.

There were also huge developments with Welsh language drama during this period, including bilingual shows where an English version of the show was shot side by side. For the Welsh version of S4C/BBC series Keeping Faith, Eve Myles learned the script phonetically in Welsh.

But it wasn’t just the BBC that was telling stories made in Wales. Indies such as Urban Myth Films set up base here, and Julie [Gardner] and Jane [Tranter] established Bad Wolf in 2015 to make high-end television for an international audience.

Here we are in 2025 and, despite a difficult year or two for the industry, things are picking up. Sky has a new show called Prisoner (no relation to the 1960s cult series) shooting out of Roath Lock, a second series of Paris Has Fallen is being filmed in Newport for Canal+ and Bad Wolf has just turned over on the fourth series of BBC/HBO drama Industry. Jack Thorne’s new drama for Channel 4, Falling, begins production next month across locations in South Wales.

When I left the BBC in 2017, my first thought was to return to London, but I wanted to stay in drama. In the end, I remained here in Wales, first retraining as a script supervisor and recently starting directing. There is a wealth of talent here, with some of the most experienced crews in the world. No one tells stories quite like the Welsh do, and I’m proud to be part of this highly creative hub.

Edward Russell is Chair of RTS Cymru Wales.