The News
A Welsh-language soap opera celebrates its 50th birthday this month. Wales has been ruled from London since 1284 AD, and the ancient Celtic tongue was largely displaced by English, until the 20th century brought a deliberate revival. As part of that effort, the BBC released Pobol y Cwm (People of the Valley) in 1974, a show depicting life in a fictional Welsh village called Cwmderi.
It is now the British public broadcaster’s longest-running TV soap opera, thanks to its mission of providing pure entertainment, with “no preaching about the state of the Welsh language, the evils of drugs, the dangers of sex, or theological dogma,” a professor at Aberystwyth University wrote for The Conversation.