Drama in the Bay

The 21st century brought a massive change to Cardiff Bay. A change

which continues with the opening of the BBC's new Drama Village,

situated in the historic Roath Basin. Covered in nearly 2000

square feet of studio space, it is a state-of-the-art home to Casualty,

Dr Who, Pobol y Cwm And Upstairs, downstairs.

Tonight, we are going to go behind the scenes of this exciting new

development and delve into their history of this iconic Welsh

Cardiff Bay is steeped in history. What began as a salt marsh became a

half butt used for the shipping Bob Bryan. -- a harbour. It wasn't

until the late 1,700s that one man recognised the bay's potential. The

second Marquess of Bute transformed it into the largest coal exporting

dock in the world. The bustling dock attracted other merchants and

exporters and Cardiff's entered into a golden age of prospecting.

Cardiff did start as an Iron exporting report but it is as a

coal exporting port that it becomes one of the largest and well known

in the world. That is largely due to the activities of the second

Marquess of Bute. He encouraged his lands to be used for call

exploitation but he also took it a stage further, he developed an

active role in developing an active -- and infrastructure to help

export the call. He died and his son became the third Marquess of

Bute as a very young child. Third Marquis of Bute developed his

father's legacy, undertaking unambitious redesign of Cardiff

Castle and the landscaping of Rowarth Park. All of this was made

possible by the vast fortune that came from Cardiff Bay's coal trade.

It is estimated that the third Marquess of Bute became the richest

man in the world because of this. It is estimated that Cardiff would

have been the largest coal exporting port in the world and

definitely one of the busiest in If you have Docs and you have

railways, it is also going to need Labour as well and so there is an

increasing workforce as more Boxx are built and more and more coal is

exported. The bay was changed by more than wealth and send its

population underwent a dramatic change. Two people who have spent

their lives in the area tell us more. Cardiff around about 1,900

was the place where people emigrated to. Not Canada, Australia,

Cardiff, in their hundreds from all over the country and all over the

world. The good thing about this, with all of the merchandise, all we

ever saw were faces. That there you got to know each other, by their

faces. -- that is how. These dock workers and sailors from all over

the world settled close to the harbour in an area known as Tiger

Bay. It emerged as a place for Merchant Navy seaman and dock

workers and captains and so on, people who worked at sea and at the

docks. And quite with -- quickly it became a multi-ethnic community.

Traces of the wealth that coal generated can be detected in the

buildings that surround Cardiff Bay. The very size of the buildings give

you some idea of the wealth that was being created, at least in

terms of the capital being produced by the buying and selling of call.

If I was going to choose one building that said the most about

how important the coal industry was to the rise of Cardiff and how

Cardiff was in the world in the late 19th and early 20th century,

it is this building, the Exchange building, built in 1886, then

extended in 1911-12 and lavishly redecorated and redesigned inside.

Someone who has great admiration for the architecture of this

building is the Cardiff born star of Casualty Suzanne Packer. I think

Mount Stuart Square is probably one of the most interesting places in

this area. It is further along than the Roath Basin but those buildings,

they really show how wealthy Cardiff was and that is a lovely

reminder of how incredible, when it was ready thriving, this area must

have looked, because the buildings are so incredible -- really

thriving. What is great coming back is seeing how they have been

redeveloped. Tiger Bay and Yuta and became a melting pot as different

cultures, cuisines, and of course music, existed side-by-side -- Bute

My parents, when they arrived in the late 1950s, they came here for

dances, two clubs. Music has a long history in Butetown, and it created

a number of singers and musicians. The most famous of whom the Shirley

Bassey. -- is. You look back and you think about what started it all

off. We were proud. It was a good background. A good background for

my... Way up the ladder to success. In Butetown, many years ago, it

would have been possible to eat French food and Maltese food,

Chinese food, Arab food, Indian food. Just walking up and down the

streets. People who came into Tiger Bay would go back with a memory of

having a lovely meal in a crowded restaurant, a Chinese restaurant.

The Cairo cafe was a mixture of things. It wasn't a cafe where you

popped in for as back or a cup of tea. It was a meeting place for

The Cairo cafe also had a prayer room. That was there before the

first mosque opened in Butetown, before the first mosque opened

which was in 1947, 1948. This was also the second oldest mosque in

The streets were full of what I realise now were foreign to other

people, foreigners to other people. To me, they were just the normal

denizens, you would hear different languages, you would hear Arabic,

this that and the other. We accepted it as normal. It takes a

long time to realise that other people don't see this as quite

normal. Inner-city like Cardiff... -- In a.

Someone with family links in the area is Mark. One of the people in

charge of the building project. is great to hear how many people

have a family link with the site, and within my own family, my mother,

who was very young in the late 1950s and worked for the Dock

Labour Board in the city centre, and every Friday she used to come

down to Roath Basin with an armed guard and hundreds of thousands of

pounds in cash to pay out the dockers. She said although it was a

very rough and ready environment that the dockers were true

gentleman and there was more bad language back at the office in the

city centre that she experienced in the docks. That might be because

she refused to pay them if they caused any trouble, but she still

looks back fondly on memories like that.

Although Tiger Bay held fonder memories for some, others viewed

the area very differently. would find out as you sort of

stepped out beyond your environment that people you do in a slightly

different way. Most of that time, people making the comments had no

idea what Tiger Bay was like. she were down under the railway

bridge, you were home. -- once you were. That was your front door and

you were back home again, back in that cosy atmosphere. It couldn't

find a finer place to live in than Tiger Bay -- you couldn't. But a

change came to this close-knit community. By the 1960s, the coal

trade was declining us feel we should Kevin and the dock became

run-down and abandoned -- as fewer ships came in. The rise of Bude

attack is connected to the rise in the cold trade -- the rise of Bude

Karen is connected to be rise of the coal trade and the decline is

also connected to that, like many towns in the Valleys, to the

decline of the industry. The once thriving community sat -- suffered

from a lack of investment. People moved elsewhere and streets and

parks were demolished to make way for new housing and high-rises. A

lot of the community spirit was also swept away. That old fashioned

idea of standing on your doorstep and talking to the woman down the

road or across the square or across the street was gone. The old ladies

used to fetch their kitchen chairs out on the street and sit there and

chat. It took the heart out of Butetown as local people knew it

was largely knocked down and replaced by maisonettes and power

blocs. When they built these flats and new houses, they were wonderful,

indoor toilets, nice, clean rooms, several if you could afford it.

They were wonderful. But it killed Some but it decided that the ideal

place for the tower blocks was whether Park had been before --

some body. Somebody decided to build a tower in the village green

so this kind of Utopian ideal turned out not to be such a good

idea. It wasn't just the decline of the coal industry but also

literally than knocking over of a community that led to the decline.

But you can't keep a tiger down. After years of neglect, Cardiff Bay

became the focus of a massive regeneration project. In the 1980s,

acres of wasteland were cleared to make way for brandy are houses and

apartments. That brand new houses. All of this was made possible by

the construction of the Cardiff Bay barrage, an ambitious engineering

process turning mud flats into a man-made lake. For some residents,

it was a controversial change, but it attracted big business. Hotels,

bars and restaurants sprang up and visitors flock to the once Enti

area. -- flocked to the once empty area. It became a home for the arts

with the Wales Millennium Centre. And the seed for government with

the Welsh Assembly. -- seat. In the 21st century, television drama

arrived in the bay. In 2005, Russell T Davies brought Dr Who

back as a flagship drama made in Wales by BBC Wales. One of its

Let's go and explore. What's the plan the? I don't know. The BBC in

London had a policy. I have worked in Manchester, Wales, and I have

never lived in London so I have always loved staff being made in

the regions. Here was the BBC, seemingly taking a bigger risk. The

biggest drama show the BBC has ever had, and we're going to make it in

Wales. We didn't have much of their track record in network drama, and

we delivered on an epic scale. There were many people who thought

that doctor who had had its time, it couldn't come back and be rude -

- reborn, and look at what happened. It was almost like they were

bringing a new... And I don't mean this in a bad way, it brought a

huge resurgence back to Wales. All of sudden, BBC World was put back

on the map, as was filming and production in Wales. The television

industry in Wales grew rapidly. In 2006, Torchwood made the day it

home. One of the things I wanted to do it was a show-off Cardiff. When

Torchwood came along, I wanted to set it on my door step. They are

looking at the people, the sea, the Tower, the Millennium Hall, I think

that's brilliant. Torchwood was another huge thing for Cardiff. As

Dr Who was just for Onto, Torchwood was about Cardiff. Torchwood

originated in Cardiff, and a share of showed the world what Cardiff

look like. When I travel around the world now and I go to different

places, they always say, Cardiff looks fantastic. I always say to go

and visit it. It's funny because Torchwood moved on after a while,

but there's a lot of people here who remember it. One of the

characters in Torchwood, the faithful -- faithful coffee boy who

sadly died, I'm told he has a shrine in the bay. There is a place

where people go and leave flowers and poems. It is kind of the

strange thing, but I'm glad it has made a mark on the landscape.

the television industry went from strength to strength, the landscape

of the bay was set to change again. With so much going on, a permanent

home for drama was needed, and Roath Basin was selected. Just

across the harbour from Butetown, it will become the drama village.

It became this thing, we needed more space. Every time we moved we

needed a bigger space. It is just ambition. Armies of local builders,

designers and engineers worked to realise that ambition. It took over

100 kilometres of cabling and enough concrete to cover four

football pitches to complete the four-acre site. The logistical

exercise to realise a major 10 studio site was an extraordinary

piece of project management. We had a fixed end date to meet Casualty's

filming, and it was great to see the team pulling together and

working collaboratively and meeting that end date. It was amazing

watching it grow from a waste land when I first came to visit to the

shell of studios, and then these fantastic facts springing up. --

sets. Being the first production to move into the studios was very

exciting and a great honour. I spent three months from the

production in Bristol before we picked up the whole production, 20

years' worth of it, and moved it Although not everyone was happy

about the relocation. The change meant a lot to this local Bell,

Suzanne. I live in Cardiff and I was commuting back and forward from

Cardiff to Bristol. When I heard that this was a possibility, it was

like a dream come true. Casualty being here as part of the Drama

Village, I think it will put Cardiff on the map even more. He

will have such a great reputation, because usually, when people think

of Britain, they always think of London, and Cardiff doesn't figure.

I think now it will have such a great impact. People will know

Cardiff and nothing that is amazing. Casual to regular, 10 be born

Charles Beare has seen the benefits of the new set. -- Tenby-born.

There was very little room to act, so it made it much more difficult.

Now there has issued amount of space. We have never built anything

on this scale before. The main studio, as far as I know, is the

two level studio in Europe, so we have got the hospital on the ground

floor and the first floor. We can drive ambulances and the canopy and

shoot direct action right from somebody arriving and going into

the hospital set. But as a whole area inside it -- that is. Home-

grown drama has also moved around the bay. This drama it is the BBC's

longest running soap opera. Pobol y Cwm has been filmed for 30 years,

and ours the soap has grown, more space was needed. When we first

heard about the move, we got really excited as a production. We have

been based in studio one in Cardiff for over 30 years, and we got

really excited about the fact that we could have our own space, we

could have purpose-built studios and a purpose-built blocks. It is

important frost have that kind of space. -- For us to have that kind

of space. Increased space has made field -- coming easier, and there

have even added a new street. biggest difference is where we were

filming up in London, it was a very closed set built in between various

office buildings of London. Here, there have the -- the production

will be able to be filmed 360. There are farming areas in each

corner that are part of the village, and now cars can drive all the way

round. In the past, we have had to drive very slowly because you would

have come into a glass corridor if you had carried on. The biggest

change for the viewers and the viewing public is now you can shoot

back from the pub entrance down and you will see the chapel, which has

always been a big part of the series. There has been so many

years of planning for this lot. The day we see a car drive down for the

first time and disappear around the corner will be a big moment for the

series. And a nice thing for the audience to see. From Pobol y Cwm

to London. Last year, we but outside of Cardiff. -- we were

outside. This year, we have come back a we are in the bay, and we

have these fantastic new studios. This is the main set. This is the

entrance hall, the grand entrance hall. At the moment, it is in the

very early stages of construction as you will see. If you come

through here, this is the main entrance hall. All this for will

eventually be covered in tiles and then a grand staircase starts here

and makes its way up that wall where. The inside of the set is

twice as high as matters at the moment -- as bat is -- as that is.

Once the art department start dressing the set, it looks as if it

could be real. For the actor, you feel as if you're in the zone.

Hopefully, we will have done well this year and we will get asked to

come back and doctor who will move out and we will move back in this

could go on three years. I hope it does! However, moving a production

the size of Dr Who down to the day comes with its own set of

challenges. I think moving doctor who will be a big undertaking. The

prop stores have started to move out already. We cleared some of the

stages there, the offices have now closed and have been prepared ready

for everybody to arrive in January. It will not only be a home to

existing dramas, but a hotbed for new ideas and programmes. One of

the reason Roath Basin is such an exciting place to be is the number

of people here who were working on your ideas and projects. Bad as any

big bash that has only come about because we now have this great

drama centre -- this has only come about because. This brand new show

that will come in and be shot is a new children's show. It is about a

boy a wizard to -- who discovers aliens are coming. It is going to

come from these studios and it is going to be magnificent. But starts

filming very shortly. We have will be the first of many new

developments that we will see her. It is an ever changing story, as

once again, historic Cardiff Bay takes his place in the future of

Wales. The Cardiff dockland area is back into the forefront of Cardiff,

and possibly international status, given the quality of the buildings

and the activity that goes on. The commodity is now the people.

you're a wander around that Cardiff Bay area, you have still got that

flavour, that traditional Labour -- There it is, all new, and you go

down there on a summer afternoon and you see all different kinds of

people walking about, happy and enjoying themselves. That is a kind

of magic. To be there with them. Cardiff has always been known for

sport, but now it will be known for drama as well. This is a city. It