The comedy horror Widow’s Cove starring Matthew Rhys is coming to Apple TV+. Weekend looks at this and other series featuring a Welsh actor with unsettling charm and devilish charisma, whose popularity is on the rise.
“Death Comes to Pemberley”
BBC One, 2013
British pop culture’s most romantic lover, Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice is every actor’s dream. Reese played a shy aristocrat with a passionate soul in the continuation of Jane Austen’s novel, which describes the family life of Darcy and Elizabeth – seemingly pure fan fiction, but it was written by detective Pee Dee James, who also belongs to the classics of English literature. A ball is being prepared at Pemberley, Darcy’s luxurious estate, but the day before Captain Danny was shot in a nearby forest, and the eternal handsome womanizer Wickham, Darcy’s antagonist, is suspected of the crime. Our exemplary gentleman has to participate in a criminal trial as a witness, which is a terrible shame for an English aristocrat. It is impossible to surpass Colin Firth in the role of Darcy – the British even erected a monument to him in Hyde Park. This Firth as Darcy emerges from a pond in a wet shirt (oh, that self-conscious British erotica!). But Reese, on the threshold of his fortieth birthday, played his original Darcy, overcoming a midlife crisis – a problem of modern man, which in the Regency era did not yet have a name.
“The Americans”
FX, 2013–2018
The KGB drops professional undercover agents Nadya and Misha (Kari Russell and Matthew Rhys) into America in the 1960s, and they are naturalized under the guise of spouses Philip and Elizabeth Jennings. The series begins in the 1980s: Ronald Reagan is in power, the Cold War continues, and the secret Russians who have taken root in the suburbs of Washington become friends with their neighbor Stan, an FBI officer. Over time, the fictitious marriage of the Jenningses becomes real: they have a son and a daughter (the party said “we must!”), and a tourism business appears as a cover. At the same time, surveillance, shootings, theft of documents and organization of sabotage in the military-industrial complex remain a familiar routine for these people. After Stirlitz, these are the coolest Russian intelligence officers in the history of television – it’s amazing that the author of the series, Joe Weisberg (for a moment, a former CIA employee) shows them with undisguised sympathy. A spy thriller turns into a meditation on identity. What is it like to be one of the strangers? What is more important – family or loyalty to duty? Where does the homeland begin? And where does it end – in geographical boundaries or in the human soul? For Carrie Russell and Matthew Rhys, the on-screen marriage has also become real – the actors have been living together since 2014 and are raising a son, born in 2016.
“Bastard Executioner”
FX, 2015
It was important for Reese to appear in this series as a guest star (while filming the long-running The Americans): it is about the struggle for independence of Wales, of which he is a passionate patriot. In the 14th century, Wales groans under the rule of the English barons and is crushed by unbearable exactions, and Edward II (the first Prince of Wales in history) wants to dismember the Ventrishire estate and give it to his favorite. The main character of the series, knight Wilkin, has to hide under the guise of an executioner so that he is not executed for his participation in the rebellion against Baron Ventris and his connection with the Welsh rebels, whose leader, nicknamed the Wolf, is played by Rhys. Sons of Anarchy author Kurt Sutter brings all the fury of his biker saga to a medieval setting. Even “Game of Thrones,” which was released simultaneously with “The Executioner,” is inferior to it in bloodiness. Seeing this, critics were taken aback, but years later the series remains a terribly relevant statement about the cruel nature of man and his struggle for life: we will be cut into pieces and spread on bread – if we do not do it first.
“Perry Mason”
HBO, 2020–2023
The classic 1960s TV series cemented the image of Perry Mason in pop culture as a brilliant lawyer who put on cool, calculating performances in the courtroom. Every time he managed to impress the jury, and even more so – the audience on the black-and-white television screens. In the new version of the adventures of the famous lawyer, Robert Downey Jr. was supposed to play him, but he dropped out due to a busy schedule, and the producers considered Matthew Rhys an adequate replacement (Downey himself was among them). The action has moved from the courtroom to the outskirts of Los Angeles, where Perry, as a private detective, is on the prowl in search of other people’s dirty secrets – and is terribly burdened by this unscrupulous occupation. It’s 1932, the Great Depression seems endless, the City of Angels is the most vicious place in the world, and Perry Mason is the most unshaven and rumpled detective in the noir genre. He began to advocate only in the second season – and this was that rare case when critics praised the second season more than the first.
“Towards Zero”
BBC One, 2025
In the novel Zero Hour (1944), Agatha Christie decided to change the usual structure of a detective story: the story does not begin with a murder (zero hour), but gradually moves towards it. The crime occurs in the middle of the story so that the reader can thoroughly study the characters and immediately begin to think through versions. Her nephew, a famous tennis player who recently divorced his wife and married his mistress, comes to the estate of a rich widow. By a strange whim, the athlete with his current wife and his ex are visiting their aunt at the same time. The house is filled with other dubious characters – the family lawyer arrives with an orphaned pupil who was expelled from school for theft, and another, the lady’s unloved nephew, is welcomed against her will by a headstrong companion. As is customary in a hermetic detective story, the circle of suspects is clearly defined and each has a motive. Matthew Rhys played the eccentric police inspector Leach – he was so depressed that he tried to throw himself off a cliff into the sea! However, since the inspector did not die in the waves, he will have to take up the investigation. In the book, the Lich was a nephew Superintendent Battlethe hero of a separate series of Christie’s novels, but in the series he is on his own and combines the features of three characters at once. We have seen all sorts of detectives, but never such neurotic ones: perhaps it is the subtle mental organization that helps Leach feel the painful essence of other people and see their hidden motives.
“Widow’s Cove”
Apple TV+, 2026
Tom Loftis (Reese), the uncredited but extremely ambitious mayor of the island with the poetic name of Widow’s Cove, dreams of turning it into a tourist Mecca and hopes for a laudatory report in the New York Times. But when a newspaper columnist arrives on the island, an ominous Stephen King fog thickens and other mysterious phenomena occur. An alarming city madman prophesies disaster and assures that an ancient evil is awakening on the island: the best room in the local hotel is cursed, a witch with sharp claws is running through the forest, the electricity goes out, and the local priest dies. Loftis, a classic skeptic who does not take supernatural devils seriously, has to refute superstitions – but, plunging into the devilish wraith of the island, he himself begins to believe in them. The horrors in the series are not funny (each episode has a new horror story!), but in parallel, an absurdist comedy is developing about office bureaucrats – the sheriff and the mayor’s ridiculous henchmen, born to fail any useful undertaking. It looks as if the cult office sitcom Parks and Recreation, where The Bay screenwriter Katie Dippold worked, was crossed with Tales from the Crypt: for the well-being of the electorate under their jurisdiction, officials try a shamanic potion and fight an ancient spell. After last year’s role as a demonic maniac in “The Monster Inside Me” Matthew Rhys appears here in the opposite role – a fragile and nervous adherent of common sense, similar to any of us: he believes in civilization and progress, but the demons attacking him do not care what he believes in.
