ITV Cymru Wales film on Aberfan in line for top RTS award
A major film produced by ITV Cymru Wales to mark the 50th anniversary of the Aberfan disaster has been shortlisted in the Best Factual (History) category of the 2017 Royal Television Society Programme Awards.
This follows the film's nomination in the Single Documentary category of this year's Celtic Media Festival.
The Aberfan Young Wives' Club was shown across the UK on the ITV network in the run-up to the anniversary in October last year.
The hour-long documentary looked at how the spirit of Aberfan has endured since the 21st October 1966 when the catastrophic collapse of a colliery spoil tip killed 116 children and 28 adults in the village's Pantglas Junior School.
The story of the disaster and its aftermath was told through the eyes of seven women who are part of the Aberfan Young Wives Group. They came together in the depths of grief and have been meeting every week for the past 50 years.
Many of the women spoke for the first time about an event that changed their lives.
Directed by multi-award-winning director Marc Evans (Safe House, Hinterland, Collision, Jack to a King, House of America), the programme made use of ITV’s extensive archive footage of the disaster and subsequent events.
The programme was the first made by Shiver Cymru, a partnership between ITV Studio's factual arm and ITV Cymru Wales. It was produced by Jonathan Hill, editor of English language programmes at ITV Cymru Wales. The executive producer for Shiver was Mike Blair. The programme was commissioned by Tom Giles, ITV’s Controller of Current Affairs.
The 2017 RTS Programme Awards will be held in London on 21st March.