Film nerd mates create comedy love letter to valleys

Three friends who have spent years geeking out together over films and TV series are about to see their own creation hit the small screen.

Based on their shared experience of growing up in the south Wales valleys, Adam Llewellyn, James Prygodzicz and Tom Rees wrote animated sitcom The Golden Cobra.

The fictional drama unfolds around a terrible Indian takeaway in former steel town Ebbw Vale in Blaenau Gwent.

"It's about time people from the valleys have their own TV show," said Adam, who also animated the series.

"Even though it is a cartoon and it's over the top and crazy it is authentically valleys," added Tom.

Adam, who grew up in Ebbw Vale, and Tom, from Maesteg in Bridgend's Llynfi Valley, met at university in Newport about 15 years ago.

They immediately bonded over a shared love of film and TV and have spent years submitting scripts to production companies with no success.

Then in 2019, while on Easter break from his teaching job, Adam began playing around with animation software and created the first episode of what would go on to become YouTube series The Vale.

"I was just bored in the house... that’s literally how it went down," said Adam.

Adam's housemates James and Tom came on board with the writing, and over time the series, set in Ebbw Vale, built a cult following.

"A clever thing we did was this competition where we said 'if you share the show on Facebook or whatever we'll draw you and put you into an episode'… we ended up doing about 100 people," said Adam.

People in Ebbw Vale started using their The Vale portraits as their social media profile pictures.

The friends began selling branded T-shirts, fans would shout catchphrases at them in the street and the odd megafan even immortalised The Vale characters with a tattoo.

Before long the series was noticed by BBC Wales.

Working with production company Beastly Media, they made the pilot for The Golden Cobra in 2021 and now the eight-part series is landing on iPlayer, BBC One Wales and BBC Three.

"I feel nervous as hell about it," admitted Adam.

"On one side I’m like ‘this is awesome’, then you have a side that is just like nerve-racking because it's such a big platform to go onto and I've never really done anything like this before."

He joked that his friends had taken on the role of therapists: "I have moments where I'm having a panic attack about it all basically."

The Abassi family, who run the takeaway from which the sitcom takes its name, are central to the storyline.

Episode one opens with the family patriarch Basil, voiced by Jeff Mirza, poisoning a food inspector who makes an unannounced visit to his vermin-infested kitchen.

As three white men, were they apprehensive about writing a sitcom with Asian protagonists?

"When we were writing the scripts we didn't make a conscious effort to say 'this is an Indian family, therefore we have to have things from their culture in it', it was basically just they run a takeaway, they happen to be Indian," explained James, who grew up in Aberdare, Rhondda Cynon Taf.

Adam said the Abassi family was partly inspired by one of his friends from infant school.

"His family owned the corner shop down the street and they were the only Asian family in Ebbw Vale," he said.

"It has always stuck in my head... Ebbw Vale is a predominately white town and it has always felt interesting to do a show where you kind of make it about the only Asian family in the town, you don't really see about it ever [so] I thought it would be interesting to make a show about those characters."

He said all the characters in the sitcom came "from a place of absolute love".

With Ebbw Vale such an essential component to the series and most of the voice actors from Wales, the accent and dialect of the south Wales valleys runs through the comedy.

As Gavin and Stacey introduced an audience outside Wales to the charms of Barry Island, this too may be many viewers' first experience of Ebbw Vale - will they get it?

"It feels real so people will relate to it," said Tom.

"We love King of the Hill, which is set in a small town in Texas. I'm not from Texas, I've never been but it feels authentic, so hopefully people will relate to this too."

"The Welsh valleys gets barely any love on TV… so when it came to making a cartoon we were like, let's absolutely set it in the real Ebbw Vale world," said Adam.

"We love The Royle Family and that's so, so Manchester, 1,000% Manchester down to every nuance and that was a massive hit."

Adam has now quit his teaching day job to focus on animating and writing, while Tom, who has previously written for the Channel 4 soap Hollyoaks, has a day job supporting adults with disabilities, and James works full-time for British Gas.

Working on this sitcom together must be fun?

“We're all just absolute nerds, we watch loads of TV and films, so every time we sit down to write we have about an hour of talking about TV and films," said Adam.

"That sometimes turns into an idea for the show,” added Tom.

But it must also have its challenges?

Adam said after spending so many hours alone aminating the series, the time they spent writing together had been lovely.

"We all have a tremendous laugh,” he said.

With them being a team of three, if two of them like an idea but the third doesn't they will work to improve it and it will go in.

"It comes from a place of love but we are brutally honest with each other," said Adam.

"We do have disagreements sometimes but... it's all for the greater good of hopefully making a good show."

The Golden Cobra is available on BBC iPlayer.