BBC actor Sera Cracroft says if disgraced former newsreader had won it would be hurtful to abuse survivors

The disgraced former BBC presenter Huw Edwards has been criticised after entering a Welsh poetry competition under a pseudonym.

The actor Sera Cracroft, best known for her role in the long-running BBC Welsh language soap opera Pobol y Cwm, told the BBC it would have been “catastrophic” if Edwards had won the prize, and that the “image of him being crowned in front of the nation” would be “hurtful to survivors”.

The actor is horribly convincing in this ripped-from-the-headlines drama about the newsreader’s grooming scandal. You might not even be able to stomach it

When future generations look back at all the trends and micro-trends that shaped television over the years, you have to assume they’ll be quite surprised when they arrive at the glut of dramatisations that have been made about famous men caught up in sex scandals.

Suddenly they are everywhere. Jimmy Savile got one, with Steve Coogan playing him in The Reckoning. Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor got two, with Michael Sheen and Rufus Sewell playing him in A Very Royal Scandal and Scoop respectively. And now, with almost crushing inevitability, comes the turn of Huw Edwards, the subject of Channel 5’s Power: The Downfall of Huw Edwards.

He’s done it again. The convicted sex offender, creator of victims, has gone and created another one – himself

I see Huw Edwards is still not the subject of any of his verbs. The BBC’s former iconic newsreader (trademark: Huw Edwards) has emerged from a minibreak in the wilderness to excoriate Channel 5’s forthcoming dramatisation of his downfall. “Mental illness is misunderstood by many but can never be an excuse for criminality,” Huw informed the public, the overwhelming majority of whom are already well across this particular point. “It can, however, at least help explain why people sometimes behave in shocking and reprehensible ways, and why things fell apart for me in the way they did.” Fell apart because of you, I think you’ll find.

Anyway, there was a lot more of Edwards’s lengthy statement. “I have been open about my struggle with persistent mental illness over a period of 25 years,” he continued. “What is less well known is the severity of that condition, which was managed successfully until the downward spiral which led to an appalling outcome.” Again, note the tragic passivity of “an appalling outcome”, as though a flow chart and not a person has led us somewhere we’d very much rather not be.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

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A powerful new fact-based drama depicts Huw Edwards’s fall from being the BBC’s top news anchor to a conviction for making indecent images of children. The Doc Martin star talks about secrecy, off-the-record research – and why his ears needed to be stuck down

Huw Edwards has not sat at a newsreader’s desk since July 2023, when he was suspended by the BBC following a report in the Sun that he had paid a teenager £35,000 for intimate images and conversations. A year later – when new BBC News at Ten anchor Clive Myrie announced that his predecessor had been convicted of possessing indecent images of children – the Welsh broadcaster’s career effectively ended.

But on Tuesday the night of 24 March Edwards is back on screen, reading the news in the late-night slot he occupied for decades. He is played by the actor Martin Clunes and his BBC desk has been recreated in the London canalside news studio at Channel 5 by the producers of Power: The Downfall of Huw Edwards.

Producers say alleged victim of grooming was ready to tell his story and show raises urgent issues around online safety

Channel 5 has defended its controversial drama about the downfall of Huw Edwards, saying it raises the “urgent” issue of grooming and online safety and gives voice to his alleged victim, who worked with the programme to tell his side of the story so “no one who has been silenced feels they are alone”.

Starring Martin Clunes as the disgraced former BBC newsreader, the drama charts the claim of a relationship and texts between Edwards and a vulnerable young man who was at the centre of a scandal reported by the Sun in 2023, which alleged the presenter made payments to a 17-year-old for sexually explicit images.

Power: The Downfall of Huw Edwards will air at 9pm on 24 March on Channel 5.