Martin clunes turns huw edwards' disgrace into must-watch horror tv
Channel 5 dropped a grenade into Wednesday-night viewing with Power: The Downfall of Huw Edwards, a 90-minute dramatization that forces the audience to stare at the mirror until it cracks. Martin Clunes, best known for affable vets and bumbling detectives, strips away every ounce of charm and presents a man eating himself alive behind the autocue. Twitter lit up within minutes: “repellent,” “skin-crawling,” “can’t look, can’t blink.”
A performance that refuses to flinch
Clunes, 64, did not “do an impression.” He excavated. The hushed baritone, the rigid shoulders, the blink-rate of someone convinced the camera can smell guilt—he bottled it, then poured it back out under hotter lights. The script hands him no courtroom catharsis; instead we get late-night texts, clammy hotel corridors, the soft click of a phone locking forever. Viewers called it “a masterclass in self-disgust,” and they are not wrong.
The real Edwards, still waiting to be sentenced for possessing indecent images of children, fired a pre-broadcast salvo through the Daily Mail: Channel 5 “made no attempt to check with me the truth of any aspect.” The network replied that lawyers put every allegation to Edwards six weeks ago and the drama is anchored in court documents, victim interviews, and 3,000 text messages. Translation: we did the homework; he just hates the grade.
The double life is the only star here
Directors Matt Towers and Helen Black shoot Westminster like a horror set: red-eye corridors, cathedral hush, the newsroom’s LEDs pulsing like a heart about to arrest. There is no hero, no redemption arc, no spoonful of public-service sugar. The camera lingers on the moment a producer spots the Met Police caller ID and everyone already knows the bulletin they will never read.
Ratings are not out yet, but Channel 5’s catch-up servers buckled overnight. The appetite is clear: audiences will stomach almost anything if you promise it is “based on real events” and cast someone willing to look hideous in hi-def. Clunes delivers that ugliness in Dolby surround.
Media insiders whisper the drama has already been fast-tracked for export; Netflix and the BBC’s commercial arm are circling. A second installment—focusing on the BBC’s internal probe—has not been commissioned, but executives are “leaving the light on,” a euphemism for ordering background research while the lawyers hold their breath.
Edwards’ sentencing hearing lands next month. Until then, his pixelated doppelgänger will keep staring back at Britain from every screen. The nation can change the channel; the image refuses to move.