Interview with Robert McKillop (Director)

What drew you to Summerwater?

The brilliant originality of the writing and the source material. The book was interesting and what John Donnelly and Freedom Scripted had done with the scripts was create an incredibly original and compelling piece of work. The writing had very little dialogue in it, which is very rare for a piece of television. It felt very cinematic. Each episode had its own distinct character and story to follow. Also, the range in genre and tone. The first episode read very much like a thriller, but the rest of the series had lots of wonderful love stories in them. I was very drawn to the idea of telling those different stories about different characters at different points in their lives. The writing has a wonderful blend of otherness and realism which is a wonderful thing to get to play with as a director because you can express ideas that you don't quite fully understand yourself. 

What did you think of John Donnelly’s scripts?

The scripts are incredibly original pieces of gripping writing and John Donnelly has a very original voice; what really drew me to the project was how little dialogue there was in the scripts and how you spend a lot of time with characters, soaking up their subjectivity and journeying with them into their past. That felt very compelling and very exciting as a director to try and visualise that language.

What is Summerwater about?

Summerwater has a mystery at its core. There's been a fire in a community of cabins by a Loch side in the Scottish countryside and somebody has died, but you don’t know the identity of this person or the circumstances around how they died. Over the course of the series, we unpack that mystery by delving into each cabin within the community and by looking at the backstory of the characters, we find out what may have led them to behave in that way in the present and make them capable of either committing an act of murder or being the victim of that murder. Within that, there are several different storylines, conflicts and love stories that are playing out. The main conflict that is highlighted across the series is how the British inhabitants of the community feel about the anti-social behaviour of the Eastern European cabin that is inhabited by workers who work at the hotel on the grounds of Summerwater. 

How did you go about creating the world of Summerwater?

What was very exciting to me was to try and create a unique world, one that doesn't exist. What we set out to do was to find locations that had a very unusual blend of otherness and realism. Places that when you walked into, you instantly felt there was something going on, there was a power there and something that really affected you. What was exciting was trying to take different locations and then blend them all together to make one whole. 

Were there any challenges?

The big challenge was that each episode has its own backstory for each main character. What was important was to find visual, tonal and stylistic variation across the series by going into that person's experience of life, who they are and their psychological and emotional makeup.

Who are the central characters in Summerwater?

In the community of Summerwater, there are five different cabins. The first is the Tindall family, which is Justine, Steve, Lola and Jack, a family who have travelled from Manchester for a holiday. In cabin two, the Campbell’s, David and Annie, who are a couple who've been holidaying there for around 40 years and have seen a lot of change over the time in the community of Summerwater. Cabin three is Josh and Millie's cabin, which belongs to Josh's parents and he's been going there for a long time too. Josh and Millie have gone there to spend time together alone to establish what their tastes are sexually and where they're at in the relationship. The Henderson family also have a cabin; they've been going there for a long time, which is Rachel and Ian and their children Becky and Alex. Alina and Marijonas are staying in the cabin at the foot of the community with their child, and they've been given that space to stay because it's a temporary place workers can stay as it’s being renovated.