A multi-season, multi-generational episodic drama
set in the valleys of south wales.
1984: Margaret thatcher's conservative government announces the closure of 20 coal mines, leading to the viciously contested miners strike.
1984: in South wales, rugby is a religion, but its high priests, the players for teams such as neath, also held regular jobs in small towns around the valleys: policemen, lawyers, accountants, builders... miners. but every week on match day they would come together and become world-class sportsmen, heroes to everyone in their town and the rest of wales.
but when the mining industry of south wales is threatened, and strikes create deep divisions across working communities, a weekly game of rugby becomes an emblem of a community in crisis; a pitch becomes a place for passions that have no place in everyday life.
the gnoll will be an episodic drama over multiple seasons.
It will be a complex portrait of a society in miniature that is uplifting & intelligent, political & popular, comic & tragic - following the rugby team and their families (a large ensemble cast equally both men and women) - spanning the years of the miners strike and mine closures, then tracing its devastating aftermath all the way to the dawn of the professional game, a journey that changed both rugby and wales as a country forever.
