BBC Wales drama series

Thomas wrote:
I can tell you that the actors are the exact same ones as they aired the exact same scene back to back on the same day. and Im pretty sure Welsh people are able to speak English fluently...

My question wasn't meant as a slight against the Welsh. My grandfather was from Cardiff. It was more of a question about replacing some actors who were more popular in Wales with ones more popular in the rest of the UK. I don't know these shows so I asked hoping someone who has perhaps seen both, or had other knowledge knew.

So far as I know, the cast and production team are the same for both versions and I would imagine that they are shot back-to-back, but as I mentioned earlier there is not a second-by-second correspondence between the two as there would be in the case of a simple language dub.

My OP was prompted more by the effect on the calendar than other factors.

When a BBC Wales production is aired, in Wales, in Welsh, the rest of the UK doesn't get to hear anything about it. When the reshot English version is aired in England (not sure about Scotland) the TVMaze Shows entry typically shows the original Welsh title plus, possibly, the English title as an alternate, but it only shows the air times for the original showing in Wales. As an English viewer, I'd love to see these programmes appear in my calendar when they air outside Wales, but for that to happen there needs to be a separate listing for the English version.

IMO, we shouldn't list the show twice. The original airdates and times are the ones to follow and then marked them watched as and when they air on whichever network you watch it on.

When and if the alternate airdates feature is added to TVmaze, then the BBC One airdates can be added to it.

I agree that it shouldn't be listed twice. It's the exact same show, the storyline, the actors and everything else is the same. It's no different from the Scandinavian series that also airs in the UK, we don't add those twice to the site either so why would we add this.

The only solution to this issue is getting the alternate airdate feature added.

Fair points made. I've voted for the alternate airdates feature.

This is definitely not a case of "dubbed", so that rule doesn't apply.

Right now I see two options. Either we could specifically add this scenario (where a show is shot twice with the same actors, but in a different language) to the "grey area" list, so we'll formally have to make a decision on a case by case basis.

Or, we can try to come up with a rule to cover it once and for all. We could simply forbid all "different filming with the same storyline and actors" entries, but I wonder if we'd risk banning too broadly. Perhaps we could add that such duplicates are forbidden if the two versions are shot back-to-back, but allowed if they are shot more than X time apart.

Personally I think it would be too arbitrary to allow it if it's more than X time apart.

In my opinion, the only ones that should be allowed are if both versions are released at the same time (when there is no single original version as there's multiple).

david wrote:
This is definitely not a case of "dubbed", so that rule doesn't apply.

Right now I see two options. Either we could specifically add this scenario (where a show is shot twice with the same actors, but in a different language) to the "grey area" list, so we'll formally have to make a decision on a case by case basis.

Or, we can try to come up with a rule to cover it once and for all. We could simply forbid all "different filming with the same storyline and actors" entries, but I wonder if we'd risk banning too broadly. Perhaps we could add that such duplicates are forbidden if the two versions are shot back-to-back, but allowed if they are shot more than X time apart.

If we be votin' ... I'm for the "Grey Area" option. That way, as you say, on a case by case basis the facts are laid out and a decision made. If you have a hard and fast rule in these funky situations, then on a case by case basis you have people coming up with endless "Ya, but what about [ Insert Unique Twist Here ]" questions or exception requests.

But it's still the exact same show!

We could just get the alternate airdate feature added, that would solve this and many more issues with shows.

MTQueenie wrote:
But it's still the exact same show!

We could just get the alternate airdate feature added, that would solve this and many more issues with shows.

We could do the Duck season/ Rabbit season bit ad nauseam. You have, and others have a POV, I and it seems a few others have a different POV. A show that is filmed twice, in two different languages, IMHO, is NOT the exact same show. It is a very similar show but it is not exact by the very facts ... two separate filmings, two separate scripts, two different languages and, perhaps, other differences that we would need to watch the shows to discover.

TPTB have the facts, I assume are mulling it over while smoking their cigars and sipping their brandy in TPTB Lounge, and will make the call. Win or lose I'll accept the decision and move on whether I agree with it or not ... in the grand scheme of things this problem is a very small percentage of what goes on here but just like my old work, 2% of the problems generated 98% of the work ... which is why we had precedent books/logs to give guidance when policy was unclear or silent.

From a data API perspective, it it most helpful to have cases like this be the same show, but allow alternate premiere dates (please vote here! https://www.tvmaze.com/threads/128/support-for-premiere-airdates-in-different-countries) and AKAs to capture different names (as IMDb does). Having separate show entities makes it much harder/less flexible for downstream users of TVMaze data.

SilverSurfer wrote:
But the main difference here is the BBC Welsh has a different script done in a different language. I also assume all the BBC cast & crew are the same but ... are they? Anyone know for sure?

MTQueenie wrote:
But it's still the exact same show!

We could just get the alternate airdate feature added, that would solve this and many more issues with shows.

Seems like they might not be the "exact same show." Was reading to see when the English version of s2 might finally air and came across this article... and remembered reading this discussion.

https://www.radiotimes.com/news/tv/2019-06-23/keeping-faith-series-2-un-bore-mercher-air-date-cast-plot/

And it’s not just the languages that are different; the English BBC audience and the Welsh S4C audience see a whole different version of each episode. Because S4C has adverts, each Welsh episode is just 48 minutes, while BBC viewers get approximately 10 minutes of extra drama.

“As a whole the two versions are tonally different,” added Myles. “We have two different editors and two different execs.”

Un Bore Mercher and Keeping Faith are so distinct from one another, in fact, that scenes are reordered and the story itself plays out in a different order in each version, explained writer Matthew Hall.

Presumably the guest stars could also be different, depending on if they can speak Welsh or not.

kevin87 wrote:
Seems like they might not be the "exact same show." Was reading to see when the English version of s2 might finally air and came across this article... and remembered reading this discussion.

https://www.radiotimes.com/news/tv/2019-06-23/keeping-faith-series-2-un-bore-mercher-air-date-cast-plot/

Presumably the guest stars could also be different, depending on if they can speak Welsh or not.

Well, except for the [allegedly] different actors, that's not really different from the Tin Star's Season 2 situation, where Sky and Amazon's versions was edited differently and even have a different number of episodes. But we still have it as a single show.

tnt wrote:
Well, except for the [allegedly] different actors, that's not really different from the Tin Star's Season 2 situation, where Sky and Amazon's versions was edited differently and even have a different number of episodes. But we still have it as a single show.

Not sure you can really compare the two situations. Tin Star was just split into two episodes for Amazon instead of one longer feature length episode from Sky, the reverse of what what ITV and PBS did for Downton Abbey which took two already existing episodes and crammed them together and removed content for scheduling purposes giving it a shorter episode count. The networks making the edits weren't involved with the production, at least not with Downton Abbey, not sure if Amazon was co-producing Tin Star of it they just air it internationally... but they were for runtime, not creating a new spoken language version from scratch.

With Keeping Faith, it's not just taking pre-existing footage within an episode and re-ordering scenes and since it's two different languages being filmed back to back, albeit of the same source material to pull from, and if Keeping Faith has 10 minutes an episode (80 for the season) extra, some scenes may not even be filmed in Welsh due to knowing the time limits beforehand. And Eve Myles said they have different editors and execs.

I got the credits for the S4C version of episode 6, I'll compare whenever the English version comes along.

So far they are presumptions from your end, so we can not really rely on those, can we? Best thing is just to wait and see, though i wouldn't be surprised if BBC is just waiting to air them till summer for an available spot. On top of that I'm pretty sure that Welsh actors are able to speak English too, so why cast twice?

kevin87 wrote:
Tin Star was just split into two episodes for Amazon instead of one longer feature length episode from Sky

No, it's not that simple. They've changed the order of some scenes, and extended some others, so the flow of the story is a bit different between the two versions. Total runtime of Sky's version is around 429', while Amazon's is about 458'. Quite the difference I'd say, don't you think?
But at the end of the day it's still the same story.

Anyways, until someone would see both Un Bore Mercher and Keeping Faith, we wouldn't know, what is the difference, and exactly how big it is :)

I say we wait till this airs, then we can make a decision about it, beforehand no one of us can know if we need to add two series or one :)

Thomas wrote:
So far they are presumptions from your end, so we can not really rely on those, can we? Best thing is just to wait and see, though i wouldn't be surprised if BBC is just waiting to air them till summer for an available spot. On top of that I'm pretty sure that Welsh actors are able to speak English too, so why cast twice?

I was just saying it's possible that some scenes might not be shot in Welsh since they knew it wouldn't make the cut for the shorter Welsh version, and that some guest stars could possibly be different because maybe they couldn't speak Welsh. Eve Myles couldn't but she learned for the role, a guest star probably wouldn't be as inclined as the star to learn it, but yes that would have to be checked against both version. Eve Myles was the one who said the execs are different. Since the source material is the same, or if it's not it's still by the same writer, I have no strong opinion either way, but it's not as straight forward as "same show" like an anime or another show being dubbed in English or just editing existing footage since the existing footage was a shot in a different language. The scenes are filmed back to back, Welsh for S4C and English for BBC Wales, so even stuff as subtle as the weather changing over the time it takes to film them would essentially make it different for each version on top of scenes being changed around. Plus how do we go about saying a show's language is Welsh if it's also in English and the English version is the original version for BBC? It's not as simple as it being a S4C show native in Welsh that's been dubbed over in English for BBC.

JuanArango wrote:
I say we wait till this airs, then we can make a decision about it, beforehand no one of us can know if we need to add two series or one :)

Season 1 already aired a year and a half ago. Season 2 has aired in Wales already and BBC is waiting for sometime this summer to air the English language version.

kevin87 wrote:

Season 1 already aired a year and a half ago. Season 2 has aired in Wales already and BBC is waiting for sometime this summer to air the English language version.

Did season 1 use different guest stars and all that?

JuanArango wrote:
Did season 1 use different guest stars and all that?

I only watched the English version... but S4C surprisingly doesn't block the US from watching, and I happen to have a trial for Acorn TV at the moment so I compared the first episode. The credits are largely the same except for non-name words being in Welsh ("Y Barnwr" in Welsh and "Judge" in English) but looks like one character is played by a different actor in each language, and English has a credit not in the Welsh version.

English - Keeping Faith

Welsh - Un Bore Mercher