Blackly funny and darkly thriller, BBC’s ‘Wolf’ is taking terrestrial telly by storm – in good and bad ways. Like a British answer to ‘Funny Games’ with a police procedural element built in, some macabre twists and a hearty but unexpected dose of LOLs, it’s a spin on the home invasion thriller that follows a London detective (Ukweli Roach) reconnecting with his Welsh roots in all kinds of bloody and unexpected ways. Of course, if you’ve read Mo Hayder's Jack Caffery novels on which it’s all based.
But if you don’t have the British author’s crime thrillers on your bookshelf, you may be wondering what the skinny is with this one. Well, wonder no more. Here’s what you need to know.
Where was Wolf filmed?
‘Wolf’ is the latest in a wave of films and TV dramas shot in Wales, that also includes ‘Sex Education’, ‘The Witcher’ and ‘Havoc’. It was filmed in Neath, Rhondda Cynon Taf and Cardiff, as well as the sand dunes at Merthyr Mawr in Bridgend. The besieged family at its core, the Anchor-Ferrers, live in a country pile that’s located in Monmouthshire IRL.
What is Wolf about?
There’s two plotlines to follow that will eventually intersect: London cop DI Jack Caffery (Ukweli Roach) is still fixating on the abduction and murder of his younger brother 30 years earlier. In fact, it’s taken the native Welshman back to London where he can keep a beady eye on the weird neighbour he believes to be responsible for the crime. But soon Caffery is back on home turf and on the case of the so-called ‘Donkey Pitch murders’ that saw two teenagers murdered in Monmouthshire five years earlier. The supposed culprit is behind bars, but did he really do it?
Meanwhile, the affluent Anchor-Ferrers family – Matilda, Jimmy and daughter Lucia – answer the door to a couple of police detectives of their own, Honey and Molina (Sacha Dhawan and Iwan Rheon). Only – spoiler! – they’re not real police officers, but some seriously twisted hombres. ‘We want you to be scared,’ explains the pair. ‘And when I say scared, I mean really scared.’
Who’s in the cast of BBC One’s Wolf?
DI Jack Caffery is played by Ukweli Roach (‘Streetdance 3D’), while Sian Reese-Williams plays his police colleague DI Lincoln, the investigating officer on the original Donkey Pitch case.
Playing the well-to-do Anchor-Ferrers are ‘Truly, Madly, Deeply’s Juliet Stevenson and ‘Line of Duty’s Owen Teale, with ‘The Feast’s Annes Elwy as their daughter. The villains of the piece, meanwhile, are played by a pair of actors who have serious bona fides when it comes to playing on-screen wrong’uns: Iwan Rheon, aka Ramsay Bolton in ‘Game of Thrones’, and Sacha Dhawan, who played The Master opposite Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor Who.
When is Wolf on TV and how many episodes are there?
All six episodes of ‘Wolf’ are on BBC iPlayer now.
The best TV and streaming shows of the year (so far).
The best films out in UK cinemas and on streaming in August.