A SERIES airing on Channel 4 has brought a local star home to the Amman Valley.
The Light in the Hall is currently airing on Channel 4 after an initial run as Y Golau on S4C.
The mystery thriller stars Ammanford’s own Alexandra Roach as journalist Cat Donato who has always been interested in the murder of Ela Roberts, her best friend from her small hometown of Llanemlyn who disappeared 18 years ago and led to gardener Joe Thomas (played by Iwan Rheon) confessing to her murder but refused, or could not explain why or what he did with the body.
Ela’s mum Sharon (played by Joanna Scanlan) is still grieving for her daughter and as her killer is being considered for parole, she believes her greatest fear could be realised – that she will never get Ela’s body back and the past will torment her for the rest of her days.
Cat – who was moved away from the area following the death of her friend and is now a journalist working in Cardiff - kept an eye on the story and as the parole news is released, she offers her editor an in-depth article about the murder.
It is a home-coming story for Alexandra Roach, as she returned to her hometown of Ammanford while filming in nearby Llandeilo and Llandovery for the dual-language series.
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Ms Roach said about returning home: “I’d recently had a baby, so this was my first job back and it was serendipitous almost that my first job was filming 10 minutes away from my mam and dad which has never happened before.”
She also spoke about how it allowed her to not only reconnect with family and friends, but to give her daughter an introduction into the Welsh language. She said: “My best friend from when I was about four years old – she just had a baby, so we got to go to spend time together – it was really special.
“The language definitely played into that for me because I always knew I wanted my daughter to speak Welsh, but I didn’t really know – living in England now – how I was going to put that into action.
“But then going back and immersing myself into the community and into a Welsh language community, it just became second nature to me.”
She also spoke about the moments where her life was similar to her character’s. She said: “There were moments, especially in the first reading of the script, that I thought that there were a lot of similarities between me and Cat.
“I moved away, I was a bit older, I was 17 when I moved to London, and I do go back and see my family often. And that’s the difference between me and Cat in that she’s got nobody there except for friends that she lost contact with. But there is a sense of when I go home that I’ve missed out on things, and I think Cat feels that as well.
“There’s a sense of frustration sometimes of living somewhere so rural. If you want something, you can’t just get it instantly like you do in a city. But there are such a lot of positives about not living in a city and I really embraced that when I was filming.”
Light in the Hall – Y Golau is airing on Channel 4 in English and was on S4C in Welsh.
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