Channel 4 announces the adaptation of Cork-set The Rachel Incident into a television series

Channel 4 has announced a TV adaptation of Caroline O’Donoghue’s novel The Rachel Incident with an eight-part series.

Produced by award-winning Element Pictures of Normal People and Poor Things, the casting is yet to be announced. O’Donoghue collaborated with Jen Statsky, co-creator of Hacks, to bring the romantic comedy to television.

“Like most authors I’ve always dreamed of having my work adapted for the screen, but never could have imagined a situation as dreamy as this,” she said.

The New York Times bestselling novel follows Rachel and her friend and roommate, James, in Cork City. Their lives get complicated when she falls in love with her married professor, Dr. Fred Byrne. Rachel and James devise a plan to seduce her professor, but things don’t go as planned.

“My favourite writers all write about sex,” O’Donoghue told Hot Press in September of 2023. “What I found so frustrating when I was a teenager, growing up reading teen books, was that sex was always framed as either a predecessor to a pregnancy storyline or it was abuse. There was never pleasure or tenderness.”

O’Donoghue, born in Cork but currently living in London, earned acclaim as an author, podcaster and screenwriter. Her podcast Sentimental Garbage has toured internationally and earned over 11 million downloads. Her seventh book SKIPSHOCK will be published in June by Walker Books.

“When I was growing up, Irish ‘femaleness’ did not exist on an international scale. It was Damien Rice and Colin Farrell. Irish women were never on TV, except Laura Whitmore later on,” she told Hot Press. “It’s totally different now. When you think of Irish writers now, you don’t always think of Yeats. You think of Rooney. That’s incredible and so exciting to be part of. It’s like a rising tide lifting all boats.”

Listen to O’Donoghue read the first chapter of The Rachel Incident below: