Is Out There based on a true story? What we know about the new ITV thriller
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This week, ITV will be airing a brand-new drama: the thriller Out There. Starring Martin Clunes as Welsh farmer Nathan Williams, the show tells the story of the slow creep of drug trafficking into the community he lives in. As things spiral – and Nathan’s son Johnny gets sucked into the trafficking scene thanks to his old friend Rhys – things become ever more dangerous, and Nathan decides to take action.
It’s a tense premise, and the trailer promises its fair share of violence. But is it true? Here’s what we know. The story itself is fictional: neither Nathan nor his son Johnny (or any of the supporting characters) exist in the real world. However, the story it’s based on – of county lines drug trafficking – is all too real. This is where drug dealers move out from the cities and bring their products to rural towns and villages in order to sell them. They also often convince locals to ‘help’ them, often suckering them in with money, and then keeping them in line with threats of violence.
In 2018, a BBC Wales investigation found that there were over 1,000 county lines drug networks across the UK – a fourfold increase over the previous four years – which recruited children as young as 13 to sell and traffic drugs across the UK. "This is how it works," a police officer from Rhyl told the BBC at the time. "The drug runners arriving in small towns give customers an untraceable mobile phone number with its own brand name - this is the county line number.
