First Look At Channel 4’s Adaptation Of Sarah Moss’ Summerwater

Autumn means hot drinks and crunchy leaves to many, but to the C&TH team it heralds an influx of great TV. From The Celebrity Traitors to Riot Women, Coldwater to The Girlfriend there is plenty of goodness to sink our teeth into – and Channel 4 has given us a taste of another morsel on its way to us. Based on Sarah Moss’ 2020 novel of the same name, it’s not only The White Lotus that can stir up tensions between holidaymakers: Summerwater whisks us to a loch-side Scottish cabin park where simmering disagreements escalate into a devastating climax.

Made up of six episodes and launching in November, here’s everything we know so far.

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First look at Summerwater, starring Jamie Sives and Shuana Macdonald. (Channel 4)

Summerwater: Plot, Cast, Release Date & More

What would The White Lotus look like if our guests were a bit less moneyed and decided to holiday in Scotland? Well, you might get something like Summerwater – which even stars a season 3 cast member but was, for the record, penned before the first series of Mike White’s hit TV show premiered.

Set over 24 hours on a rainy summer’s day at a remote loch-side holiday park, Summerwater weaves together the lives of several families as they navigate niggling conflicts, private dilemmas and past dramas, all backdropped by the beauty of Scotland. With the ensemble of characters spanning young children to pensioners and everyone in between, we are told Summerwater will ‘take an unflinching but empathetic look at human nature across generations,’ with each episode centring on one or two characters and their backstory. Channel 4 says the result will be a compelling drama that builds to a tragic climax, but also a riveting portrait of modern Britain, with topics spanning nature, family, sex and class all covered.

Daniel Rigby & Valene Kane in Summerwater. (Channel 4)

Screenwriter John Donnelly has adapted Sarah Moss’ bestselling 2020 novel of the same name to produce this six-part drama. He says: ‘Sarah Moss writes with perception, compassion and wit about sex, love, and the dark impulses of the human heart. She is one of our most brilliant chroniclers of modern life. In Summerwater, Sarah has found the perfect environment to explore our secrets and desires – a rain-drenched holiday park in Scotland. Summerwater is at once an atmospheric mystery, a hilarious and heartbreaking exploration of identity and an existential thriller.’

Joining Donnelly behind the scenes are directors Robert McKillop and Fiona Walton, bringing Moss’ novel to the screen. According to the blurb, Summerwater balances kinship and cruelty in a divided world, telling a gripping tale over the course of the summer solstice – the longest day of the year. But because it’s also a washout, the residents are left with little other to do than watch each other. Cabin fever naturally ensues, with all powerlessly watching the heat rise. Little do they know, a tragedy lies ahead when night finally falls.

Another tidbit: Moss named her novel after William Watson’s poem ‘The Ballad of Semerwater’ (1858–1935), itself inspired by a local legend surrounding Yorkshire’s real lake Semerwater. In it, an aged man passes through a village and begs the locals for food and a place to rest. All deny him bar one: a shepherd living on the outskirts of town. The next morning, the old man curses the village, damning all but the shepherd with floodwater. In Moss’ novel, one character knows and refers to the poem, misremembering it as ‘Summerwater’.

Arnas Fedaravičius behind the scenes of The White Lotus Series 3 Episode 1. (HBO)

When C&TH met The White Lotus season 3’s Arnas Fedaravičius, the Lithuanian star had swapped Thailand’s beaches for rainy Scotland to ‘shoot a new show’ – which we now know as Summerwater. ‘I can only say bits and bobs about it,’ Arnas teased at the time. ‘It is a story about love, but also the disappointment of having dreams and those dreams not working out, and just dealing with what happens in front of you and hopefully finding love again when all fails.

‘It’s a lot sadder than The White Lotus, the experience of this character,’ Arnas added. ‘Funnily enough, at some point, I do end up working at a hotel as well – but in a very different capacity, in a much more dire circumstance.’ Consider us intrigued…

Anders Hayward & Shereen Cutkelvin in Summerwater. (Channel 4)

The Cast

Joining Arnas, we have a stellar cast including plenty of Scottish talent, including Emmy and BAFTA winner Dougray Scott, beloved star Shirley Henderson and former Neon Jungle singer Shereen Cutkelvin. The full cast we know so far is as follows:

• Dougray Scott as David
• Shirley Henderson as Annie
• Arnas Fedaravičius as Marijonas
• Anna Próchniak as Alina
• Valene Kane as Justine
• Shereen Cutkelvin
• Anders Hayward
• James Harkness
• Daniel Rigby
• Shuana Macdonald
• Jamie Sives
• Gabriel Scott

James Harkness in Summerwater. (Channel 4)

Release Date

Summerwater will launch on Channel 4 in November, though a specific date is still TBC. It’s one of two high-profile novel adaptations launching on Channel 4 in November, the other being a four-part screen version of Louise Kennedy’s 2022 Troubles novel, Trespasses (find out more here).

Stay tuned for more.