Welsh Soap Star Gwyn Elfyn Quits Pobol y Cwm

He’s one of the UK’s longest serving soap actors but after 28-years in Pobol y Cwm Gwyn Elfyn is saying farewell to his character of Denzil Rees.

The programme launched on BBC Wales in 1974, with a switch to S4C in 1982. Shopkeeper and former farmer Denzil Rees has featured in the programme since 1984.

Pobol y Cwm – People of the Valley in English – is produced in entirely Welsh language which has limited its appeal to the rest of the UK and beyond. A failed attempt at screening the programme with subtitles on BBC Two in the 1990s was short lived.

For S4C viewers however the BBC Wales produced programme has gripped the country for four decades and Denzil has been part of several major storylines including marrying twice – to sisters – and the death of one of his children.

Across this month, in a plot that sounds like something straight out of Mersey Television’s Brookside, an illness will start to spread throughout Cwmderi, the setting of Pobol y Cwm, with the cause of the disease remaining unknown.

Producers of the programme have suggested that Denzil’s departure will be ‘one of the biggest’ in the history of the long running saga.

Speaking to the BBC Elfyn said: “Denzil has two memories that stay in my mind, marrying Eileen and working with Dic Deryn on the skips. As far as my personal memories, the story of losing John, one of Denzil’s twins, is the best story I’ve ever had.

“It was traumatic and the biggest challenge I’ve had working on Pobol y Cwm.”

Pobol y Cwm airs Monday to Friday at 8pm on S4C