Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Museum’ On BritBox, A Welsh Drama About A Museum Director Who Plunges Into The Underworld After An Affair

We’re generally used to seeing shows from the United Kingdom in English — even if it’s through thick Scottish or Northern Irish brogues. But other languages are spoken in the country, and The Museum shows us one example: Welsh. Most of the dialogue is in the native language of Wales, with some English sprinkled in. It adds a little more of a local flavor to a thriller that could take place in just about any city. Read on for more…

THE MUSEUM: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Della Howells (Nia Roberts) states her name and position — Executive Director of the National Museum of Wales — to a camera from a nondescript location. She says she did everything she did for the museum’s benefit. Finally, she says “Don’t let anyone rewrite your history,” before the camera is shut off.

The Gist: Six weeks earlier, Della is with her husband Alun (Steffan Rhodri) at a party the museum is giving to celebrate the retirement of the old Executive Director and celebrate her promotion to the top spot. She and her colleague Elfryn (Simon Watts) were up for the spot, and he claims he’ll honor their deal not to get bent out of shape, no matter who gets it.

Della’s son Daniel (Samuel Morgan-Davies) meets a date outside the museum. His name is Caleb (Steffan Cennydd), an art student at Daniel’s university who auditioned for a play Daniel was directing. Della’s other kid, her daughter Mags (Mared Jarman), was expected to show but isn’t there; she calls her father to pick her up from a dicey living situation, which forces Alun to leave the party before Della is to make her speech.

As she’s having a drink in her new office with her former personal assistant Sadie (Hanna Jarman), Della sees Caleb hanging around outside in what’s a private corridor. He claims he’s looking for a restroom, but he impresses her with his knowledge of a piece that’s in a case in the hallway. Later, she rides with Daniel and Caleb; when Daniel goes back into the museum to fetch his hat, Caleb takes advantage of the opportunity to seduce Della.

For her part, Della only puts up a tiny amount of resistance, but her reaction to where Caleb is daringly putting his hands speaks to someone who wasn’t only attracted to Caleb but has likely been having marriage problems. It also turns out that Caleb had Daniel’s hat, which means he wanted to be alone with Della.

When Caleb wakes up at Daniel’s place the next day, Daniel tries to gauge how Caleb feels about him; Caleb’s actions and words are noncommittal. At a certain point, we see the day and evening from Caleb’s perspective, including him reading a newspaper article about Della’s promotion.

Della keeps running into Caleb, whether it’s at the consignment store where she brings her late father’s clothes, or when he comes to the museum on a day when she’s presenting a performance by a pipe organ player. And she’s not unhappy about his presence. When he tells her at the museum that he’ll be alone in the consignment store all day, they both know what he’s proposing.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? In a lot of ways, The Museum has the same feeling as The Affair, except everyone’s speaking Welsh, and it takes place in Cardiff instead of a seaside town like Montauk.

Our Take: Created and written by Fflur Dafydd, The Museum (original title: Yr Amgueddfa) is supposed to show how Della falls from what seems like a high point in her life and career because of a momentary bout of weakness with a much younger man. Even though we don’t see it in the first episode, we know that Caleb is more than your average art student, and that he’s targeted Della for a reason that is likely criminal in nature. How he sucks her into his world, where there is likely a lot of stolen art involved, will be interesting to watch.

The parts of the story that we need to have filled in involve Della and her family life. It seems that her marriage to Alun is troubled, given the questions Sadie asked her that week, which Della found to be too personal to be asking the new boss. Also, when Della pleasures herself to the thought of Caleb, Alun wakes up and sees what’s going on. He tries, but we see him apologize the next morning.

Is Alun feeling inadequate? He lies about not getting the promotion he thought was a given, and he overall looks like he’s more uptight than the man Della likely fell for two or so decades ago. And we’re also wondering how Mags fits into this equation, given her and Della’s adversarial relationship. There’s also the matter of Della’s mother Elinor (Sharon Morgan), who is more sanguine about Della’s father’s death than Della is comfortable with.

We want to know more about Della’s “deal” than Caleb’s, to be honest. What is driving her into this tryst with Caleb, when she’s at the point in her life when she has the most to lose? The consequences of that tryst should give us some answers.

Sex and Skin: All of what we see is basic-cable friendly, with any disrobing taking place under blankets or through mostly opaque windows.

Parting Shot: Della and Caleb go into a room in the basement of the consignment shop, and she tells him “this can only be once, and you can never speak of it again.” They close the door and start to disrobe as the screen goes dark.

Sleeper Star: Samuel Morgan-Davies is a hoot as Daniel; we just hope that he sees through Caleb’s BS sooner rather than later.

Most Pilot-y Line: The first episode gets a little cheeky with the timeline, showing that Saturday of the party from Caleb’s perspective after showing it the first time through, with pieces of information missing, like how Daniel found his hat. That cheekiness felt like more of a flourish than something that was necessary from a narrative standpoint. Otherwise, the story lays out pretty well, and Roberts and Cennydd actually have an interesting chemistry together, given their wide age difference.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The Museum is setting itself up to be a fine thriller, with good lead performances and just enough story threads to keep viewers from getting bored.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream The Museum On BritBox