Wolf: who’s playing who in the BBC crime drama of the summer

The BBC’s latest crime drama Wolf has all the ingredients for a massive hit: a cast at the top of its game, a labyrinthine plot and twists galore.

Based on the hit books by Mo Hayder, the Wales-set Wolf follows the story of DCI Jack Caffery, a man hellbent on finding justice for his brother, who was abducted and killed when they were both children.

At the same time, the show tells the story of the wealth Anchor-Ferrers family, who end up trapped in their remote Monmouthshire home by a pair of psychopaths – and when the two narratives collide, “it’s a thrilling, nail-biting and deeply disturbing race against time."

Though there are no big-name stars in Wolf, its cast are a mix of up-and-coming names and industry veterans: here’s what you need to know about them.

Ukweli Roach plays DCI Jack Caffery

Taking on the lead role of Jack is dancer, choreographer and actor Ukweli Roach. Jack is obsessed with the neighbour he believes killed his brother; years later, he’s a typical lone wolf, who’s just as likely to disobey orders as he is to follow them.

Roach has been in the industry for a decade, but is best-known for his role as Robert Borden in American crime series Blindspot. On this side of the pond, he has also appeared in The Midwich Cuckoos, Humans and Annika in 2021 alongside Nicola Walker – the latter marked his first foray into crime drama.

"It was a great chance to play a type of character I had not been asked to portray before. I’d never done a police procedural or been part of a team before, so Annika was a really good challenge for me,” he told the Scottish Field. “It was also a chance to work with an amazing cast. Nick’s scripts were wonderful… they’re quite hard-hitting, dark and gritty, but at the same time, they are light and warm."

Sacha Dhawan plays Honey

Sacha Dhawan first shot to prominence thanks to his role as rogue Timelord the Master in Doctor Who. In Wolf, he plays Honey, a police officer who turns up at the Anchor-Ferrers house at the start of the show.

Born in Stockport to parents from Punjab, Dhawan started acting at the age of twelve and attended the Laine-Johnson Theatre School in Manchester. In 2006, he appeared in seminal film The History Boys, playing Akthar opposite James Corden, Russell Tovey and Dominic Cooper.

Since then, Dhawan has amassed a sizeable CV, mostly in television: alongside playing the Master, he’s appeared in Line of Duty, Dracula, Sherlock, Last Tango In Halifax and Disney+ series Iron Fist (in which he played the villain).

Iwan Rheon plays Molina

Molina is Honey’s professional partner – albeit one with a penchant for not taking things seriously. Like Honey, he turns up at the Anchor-Ferrers home at the start of the series and kick-starts a series of events that will eventually collide with Jack Caffery’s story.

Rheon himself is best known for playing one of the most hated characters in Game of Thrones: the twisted Ramsey Bolton, who occupies Winterfell after it falls to the Bolton family.

A Welsh native, Rheon was born in Carmarthen and grew up speaking Welsh; he was spotted by a talent scout at the Welsh National Eisteddfod at the age of 17 and went onto join Pobol Y Cwm, a soap on Welsh-language channel S4C.

From there, he went to train at LAMDA and started his career in musicals. Later on, he cast as Simon in Channel 4 drama Misfits (for which he went on to win an award) and has since gone onto star in ITV series Vicious, Channel 4’s The Light in the Hall and Marvel TV series Inhumans.

Juliet Stevenson plays Matilda Anchor-Ferrers

Chances are, you’ll recognise Juliet Stevenson: she’s a veteran of the acting industry and has been in the industry for decades. She plays Matilda Anchor-Ferrers, a wealthy woman looking after her infirm husband. Along with her daughter, the pair travel to their Monmouthshire home to recuperate after his operation… before things go bad.

Stevenson was born in 1956 in Kelvedon, Essex and went onto study at RADA, graduating alongside actors like Jonathan Pryce, Alan Rickman and Kenneth Branagh. She is best known for playing Nina in Truly, Madly, Deeply – for which she was nominated for a BAFTA, for Best Actress in a Leading Role. She’s also starred in Emma (1996), Mona Lisa Smile (2003) and Infamous (2005) and has enjoyed a hugely successful theatre career – and won a Lifetime Achievement Award for her work in 2018. She is also a dedicated painter.

Owen Teale plays Oliver Anchor-Ferrers

Welsh actor Owen Teale is one of the many on this list to specialise in playing villains, but his character, Oliver Anchor-Ferrers, is one of the show’s victims. Recovering from a serious operation, Oliver finds himself trapped with the rest of his family when some psychopaths decide to play a series of twisted games with them.

Teale was born in 1961 in Glamorgan and trained at the Guildford School of Acting. A fellow Game of Thrones alumnus alongside Iwan Rheon, he played the uptight Ser Alliser Thorne, a member of the Night’s Watch – he’s also appeared in shows like The Rig, Marian, Again (in which he played the abusive husband of the lead character) and A Discovery of Witches.

Annes Elwy plays Lucia Achor-Ferrers

Like Rheon and Teale, Elwy is also Welsh – she was born in Penarth in 1992 – and has made a career out of appearing in both English and Welsh-language stage productions. In 2018, she was nominated for Best Actress at the BAFTA Cymru awards, eventually losing out to Eve Myles.

Since then, she has starred in The Crucible at Bristol’s Old Vic, the 2017 BBC adaptation of Little Women and recent Channel 4 drama The Light in the Hall/ Y Golau, in which she plays the daughter of Joanna Scanlan’s grieving mother Sharon. In Wolf, she plays Lucia, the scared daughter of Oliver and Matilda, who struggles with the impact of growing up in her brother’s shadow.

Sian Reese-Williams plays DI Lincoln

Reese-Williams’ character DI Lincoln has a complex history with Jack Caffery. Initially responsible for investigating the Donkey Pitch murders – a gruesome series of killings that come back to haunt the Anchor-Ferrers family – Lincoln is at odds with Jack, who wants to prove her wrong.

Born in Swansea in 1981, Reese-Williams is also a native Welsh speaker, who made her TV debut in 2008 as Gennie Walker in Emmerdale. In 2016, she was cast in Welsh/English language crime drama Hinterland, following this up with an appearance in award-winning S4C show 35 Diwrnod. Like many others, she’s also appeared in Line of Duty – as Sgt. Jane Cafferty.

Wolf is streaming now on BBC iPlayer; read our review here