Interview with John Donnelly (Screenwriter)

Tell us a bit about Summerwater…

Summerwater is character-based thriller about various groups of people who've gone on holiday to some cabins in a beautiful part of Scotland, by a beautiful loch in the middle of the beautiful woods. They've gone for all the reasons you would go to a place like that; to not fly, to be close to nature, because they want their kids off their iPads, for a bit of space and to feel good about themselves. But then as soon as you get to a place like that, you want your mobile phone signals and Wi -Fi back because you realise you're stuck with your family and you're stuck with yourself with all the problems you brought with you, the weather's not as great as it was and suddenly you think, “why have we come to this place?” 

We find out at the start of the series that someone dies, and we want to know who that person is and whether somebody is responsible, because we have a sense that someone there is responsible for that. And then there's the big question of the series, which is, how did this happen? And how did we get to a place where someone had to die? 

How did the project come to you and what stood out about Sarah's novel that you thought would really translate well onto the screen? 

The novel was sent by Mike Ellen at Freedom Scripted for me to have a look at and see if I was interested in it. I was gripped by it. I love the fact that it's about human beings and has an immense amount of detail and psychological acuity in terms of why people do the things they do. There's an appealing strangeness to it as well. It feels like it's about the way we live now, both in terms of being English, being Scottish, being British, being European, and what all of those things mean, and done in a way that really appeals to me. Which was not having big speeches about what those things mean, but instead those themes coming out in the way the characters behave with their families, with each other. It also has this strain of mysticism running through it, which I always enjoy. 

What are some of the characters faced with in the series?

Summerwater is fundamentally a show about human connection and why it's important, why we need it and crucially what happens if you lose it. So, all the families and couples are dealing with something very personal. There are people dealing with aging, a loss of control of their lives, a sense that “my life was going quite well, and suddenly I'm approaching forty and everything seems to have stalled, and other people seem to be doing well, and someone I don't like appears to be taking my job”.

There are teenagers dealing with the anxiety of growing up, the wonder of being a teenager, and also the modern anxiety of that where we have these creature comforts around us but still feel unhappy. There are children dealing with the problems of growing up and their education, and there are people dealing with illness, and others who are dealing with having moved to a new country to pursue a new life, and this country they've moved to isn't what it was before. All these things come together and fuel the sense that other people are taking something from me, and people are dealing both with the problems of other people and the problems that they bring themselves. You can't escape other people, and you can't escape yourself. 

How are you hoping the series looks on screen?

One of the brilliant things about Sarah Moss's source novel is the environment that the action of the show takes place in. You're in this beautiful and vast landscape and one of the things that we were keen to achieve with this was to create a sense of myth that is more common with American films and TV shows than it is with Britain. Britain is often underused to create a sense of scale and scope and space. There is so much beauty within this landscape, but also so much strangeness as well. We're keen to avoid a picture postcard view of Scotland and to get a sense of it as being a place of great beauty but also being a sense of danger. The woods are extraordinary to look at but also the woods are a place you can get lost. And the same with the loch, it looks stunning, the light there is incredible and you get this sky-like slate at times, but also the loch is a place of turbulent undercurrents. All of these things look visually incredible and hopefully build a sense of a Britain that we don’t often see in terms of the beauty and the strangeness of it on screen. The combustibility of our nature as people is mirrored in the combustibility of the environment.

What does someone like Robert bring to the series and how has he taken your scripts and really translated them?

Robert McKillop brings lots of things to the table. He's got a keen visual eye and can look at things and see things that you might not otherwise have noticed. He’s created a sense of the visual strangeness of Britain. It's not all greys and browns in this country. He's created a vivid landscape, the strangeness of offices and the hotels. You're going to see hotels in a way you've not seen them before. We didn't want Britain to feel drab; we wanted it to feel distinct. He’s also good at mining the human drama out of the show. It's no use to us if the show just looks pretty and if the landscape is just there to look nice. It's got to be there to hold the dramatic action of the show and Rob is great at creating a sense of drama and dynamics and tension within scenes. In Summerwater there's a great range of characters, and one of the things that is really exciting about that is watching people of different ages interact on screen. We have a broad range of people in terms of their backgrounds, the way they speak, where they come from and that feeds into the idea that we're creating a world here rather than just a small chamber piece.