Summerwater review: Channel 4's snail-paced new drama is a holiday from hell for the viewer
Holidays can be hell, as anyone who's flown on a budget airline will know. Things have a tendency to go wrong, and flinging a family together in a confined space – like, say, a holiday cabin on the edge of a Scottish lock – can cause all kinds of problems.
Which brings us to new drama Summerwater (Channel 4, Sun-Tues, 9pm), and the arguments, violence and apparently fatal fires at a discount Center Parcs in the Highlands.
It's a very odd kettle of fish, not quite knowing what it wants to be – a casserole of crime thriller, domestic drama, psychological chamber piece and supernatural creep-fest, as if the programme-makers hadn't known what to pack so just chucked everything in the suitcase.
And it's glacially slow, long sequences of blank stares, or close-ups of the actors silently agonising over a past indiscretion, or a present predicament.
It's something you'd imagine the cast would love, giving them the chance to emote cinematically against a backdrop of darkly silent pine forests and tranquil, silvery lakes.
But when you don't know who these people are, or why we should care about them, it feels like atmosphere is taking the place of real emotion.
The first two episodes follow the same pattern: we open with the focus episode looking at a fierce blaze, before cutting to, presumably, a police interview room where they are asked who they think killed an unnamed victim.
From there we flashback to see the events of the same day repeated from the viewpoint of a different person in each episode.
Valene Kane plays dissatisfied working mum Justine, lumbered with a husband who means well but can't articulate his emotions, passed over for a promotion in favour of an “external appointment”, bringing up two tweens who can't stand the sight of each other.
The following episode we see middle-aged doctor David (Dougray Scott), a GP with an ultra-refined Morningside accent, who harbours regrets over an affair from his youth, especially now wife Annie – played Shirley Henderson-like fluting weirdness by, well, Shirley Henderson – is showing signs of mental illness.
Justine has been busy taking revenge and the woman who took her job, disposing of evidence in various places around the forests which surround the holiday park.
David, meanwhile, can't quite bring himself to either chuck wife Annie off a cliff, or pack a bag and leave.
And the viewer ends up disliking both of them as they bumble around looking either blank-faced (Justine) or puce with rage and grief (David).
Mix in a hut in the woods which seems to have an hallucinogenic effect on anyone who goes in it, a woman who takes photos of other holiday park inmates at random and a soundtrack which aims for ethereal and dissonant but only hits tuneless and annoying, and Summerwater ends up being much less than the sum of its parts.
It's based on a novel by Sarah Moss, and you suspect much of the dialogue-less sequences are an attempt to portray psychological turmoil, but lack of pace anywhere else, your eyes end up drifting away to your phone, or you don't wait for an ad break to go and put the kettle on.
By the end of the second episode – what with the inferno, the repeated views of the same day, the inner maelstrom - you half-think the characters are stuck in purgatory, condemned to repeat that holiday from hell eternally, while being taunted by the mistakes of the past.
If you've been stuck in an airport departure lounge when your plane's been delayed 12 hours, you might know how they feel.
And Summerwater's holiday from hell puts you right back there.