RTS Cymru Wales had a strong presence at the National Eisteddfod, the week-long Welsh language arts and culture festival, which was held in early August in the historic town of Llanrwst, north Wales.
For the third year running, the RTS centre was a partner in the pop-up cinema ‘Sinemaes’.
As part of RTS Cymru Wales’ 60th anniversary celebrations, the centre hosted a session on classic Welsh language TV comedy.
The six featured shows spanned the 30-plus years of S4C’s existence and included some lesser known titles such as Newydd Bob Nos, a comedy about an anarchic TV news studio that was produced back-to-back in Welsh and in English (with the title Night Beat News) and the sketch show Torri Gwynt, which was produced by HTV Wales (now ITV Cymru Wales) and featured the actor and musician Dewi ‘Pws’ Morris who was in the audience.
At the end of the session, the audience voted for the programme they wanted to see shown in full at the end of the week.
The winner was C’mon Midffild!, a highly popular comedy series about a dysfunctional village football team. First broadcast in 1988, it was written by Mei Jones and directed by Alun Ffred Evans and ran until 1994.
A close contender was Dim Byd Fel Can I Gymru, a send up of the annual song for Wales competition run by S4C on St David’s Day.
Former RTS Cymru Wales Chair Tim Hartley, who introduced the session, said: “This was a fascinating look back at the wealth of comedic talent in the archive. It was particularly interesting to see the arc of development in the role and prominence of women."
"Symbolically perhaps, our final clip, Run Sbit, about a lookalike agency, starred two women in central roles.”
During the week, RTS Cymru Wales screened the innovative film about Welsh poetry, Dal: Yma/Nawr, which was directed by Marc Evans. In partnership with the screen and sound archive of The National Library of Wales, it also showed a reel of archive Welsh language television commercials, which included what is believed to be the first use of cynghanedd, a form of strict metre Welsh language poetry, in a TV ad.
As well as RTS Cymru Wales, the other partners behind the Sinemaes cinema were: Bafta Cymru, Fflim Cymru, Film Hub Wales, Into Film Cymru, Welsh producers association TAC, the BFI Network and the screen and sound archive of The National Library of Wales.
