Power: The Downfall of Huw Edwards - a CAAGe review

He was ‘our Huw’, a cuddly Welshman with an adorable Welsh accent.

Until he wasn’t. He turned slim. He turned serious. He was the man the BBC trusted with anchoring the news, delivering serious information to the nation about the death of a much-loved monarch, and the crashing news that Brexit had happened.

If the man was changing in front of our eyes, behind the scenes, things were taking an even darker turn.

The Story Unfurls

Apparently happily married with five children, Edwards started an ‘affair’ with a young man, Ryan Davies, who Edwards sent money for sexual acts and developed a relationship with. Ryan had been persuaded to contact Huw for money by Alex, who he had been on an excruciatingly bad first date with.

There were numerous contacts involved, with Edwards persuading young men to commit sexual acts for him, in return for which which he rewarded them with money, and seemingly a good dose of coercive control.

The first we at CAAGe had heard of this story breaking was when CAAGe was contacted by media for comment on grooming, but then, suddenly. things went quiet. Interview appointments were silently dropped. I wondered fleetingly what we had done wrong.

The insight in this dramatisation into what was happening at The Sun offered an explanation as to why things weren’t being reported.

Huw Edwards was (is) emotionally fragile having been caught. He lost his high-profile job and had fallen from grace. He had abused his fame and his position of trust and was shamed. He was in hospital in a fragile mental state, whether hospitalised or having checked himself in.

The media was encouraged to back off for his wellbeing.

Justice?

I don’t wish harm to Edwards’ mental state, of course. Apparently incarcerating him would have put him at risk.

I do, however, wish justice for the victims who were groomed by him. However old they were. And the victims in this tale are scattered far and wide.

It’s hard to park the images of cuddly Huw, respected Huw, admired Huw, but we are talking here about a man who has been found guilty in a court of law - a man who confessed. He was given an incredibly lenient six-month prison sentence, suspended for two years, after admitting to creating no less than SEVEN Category A indecent images of children - the most severe type - as well as 12 Category B, and 22 Category C images.

This makes me suspect/speculate there may have been other charges that Edwards didn’t get tried for in exchange for an admission. It’s a story I’ve seen too many times. The combination of trial costs, overstretched courts and less certain convictions makes plea bargaining all too common in our legal system. It’s pure speculation, I have no inside track on this case, but truth and justice too often come second place to pragmatism and speed. Great for the public purse, but tough on victims and ‘collateral damage’ bystanders.

The photos he was ‘done’ for come on top of grooming at least two named young men into performing sex acts on videos, for which justice doesn’t seem to have been done. But it wasn’t them complaining in the first instance. It was largely, apparently, parents knocking on doors in frustration, if this dramatisation holds true.

Polemics

Alex Williams sent Edwards indecent images of children - including two videos of a boy believed to be aged between seven and nine years old. I don’t know enough/didn’t glean enough about Williams to know what or who would have motivated him/persuaded him to do that, but the fact that Edwards wasn’t appalled and didn’t report him may speak to him either (a) being complicit; or (b) being afraid of the consequences of revealing the truth.

If it hadn’t been for police looking into Williams’ case, would Edwards have escaped justice?

And there it is. There is so much wrong with this story. Not the documentary itself - the underlying story. So much unanswered.

People knew but couldn’t do anything. Why?

The police knew and didn’t (couldn’t?) act. The Met's Specialist Crime Command even concluded at one point  that no criminal offence  was committed. Was it because getting 17 year old boys to perform acts in front of a camera seems consensual?

The BBC is not looking great with yet another grooming scandal at its doorstep. Endless other presenters found themselves tarred with the ‘was it him?’ speculation, and it was Edward’s wife who finally stepped forward and stopped the dreadful guessing game, from which few high profile men at the BBC seemed to escape.  How must that have been for his wife, whilst simultaneously trying to protect herself and her children? Knowing that her husband was a depressive. It almost doesn’t bear thinking about. But think about it we must, or all of this has been just for entertainment.

For me, this documentary answers and raises questions in equal measure.

A young man ended up with a drug habit paid for by Edwards’ acts. Would it have happened without him? Who knows?

Pornographic photos were found: who created them? What sickness lies behind that? Why would anyone find that attractive?

Why were the media unable to go ahead with their stories?

Why was Edwards’ sentence so low? (Although at a guess, rather full prisons probably played a part.)

I was left with the impression of Edwards as a controlling groomer, for whom image and status were important (almost certainly hard won), and who could, should he have chosen to do so, have broken a story about those images, helping bust Williams sooner. There was an edge of vulnerability, fleeting, occassional, but had Williams not been bust, would Edwards have continued longer?

What about the parents of those abused children in the images? What are the stories behind them and their children?

Time will tell.

The Fallout

Edwards is in and out of hospital with mental heath issues, although how you pay for an expensive mental health facility when you’re unemployed beats me.

And he’s also now apparently suggesting that the documentary was one sided. A Huw Edwards comeback seems a long way off, but stranger things have happened.

At CAAGe we’ll continue trying to find the reasons and identify what genuinely could create change for people who have been groomed. Business as usual.

Edwards is just one more, but this documentary seems important because there’s insight there. All of the characters are somehow blemished. That’s what makes it all too real in a World where it would be great if our villians were somehow marked out as ‘different’, as too obvious to miss.

Ending on a Small Smile

Meanwhile, we have a small, quiet satisfaction amid the questions and confusions.

For Edwards, for whom appearances appear, from the outside at least, to matter greatly, it was Clunes not Clooney who was chosen to portray him so brilliantly in this compelling recreation of events.

A small, albeit cruel, smile in an equally cruel situation. (Sorry, not sorry!)

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Power: The Downfall of Huw Edwards, Docudrama for Channel 5, 2026. Written by Mark Burt, directed by Michael Samuels, starring Martin Clunes as Huw Edwards. https://www.channel5.com/show/power-the-downfall-of-huw-edwards