Ringside options Ian McGuire’s ‘The Abstainer’ with writer Mark O’Rowe attached.

Ringside Studios has optioned the rights to adapt Ian McGuire’s new thriller and attached BAFTA nominated writer Mark O’Rowe (Temple, Normal People) to adapt as a high end, six-part limited series for TV.

The Abstainer is McGuire’s third novel and a follow up to 2016’s Booker long-listed The North Water, which was adapted for television by Andrew Haigh and aired on the BBC last year starring Colin Farrell, Jack O’Connell and Stephen Graham.

The Abstainer is a riveting cat-and-mouse thriller which starts in the crowded streets of mid-nineteenth century Manchester before moving to the backwoods of New England, USA, for its extraordinary climax.

 Following the public hanging of three of their members, the underground Irish nationalist Fenian society plot a bloody revenge. To execute their plans they draft in an American, Stephen Doyle, veteran of the US civil war, and a man for whom violence is a way of life. 

To counter the Fenian threat, the Manchester police force have recruited their own outsider, James O’Connor, an Irishman who has fled grief and drink in Dublin for a sober start in England. When a long-lost nephew arrives on O’Connor’s doorstep looking for work, he cannot foresee the way his fragile new life will be imperiled—and how his and Doyle’s fates will become fatally intertwined.

Ringside Studios was established in 2020 by Gub Neal, with backing from Newen Studios, to produce ambitious drama for the domestic and international market. The company is currently in post-production on Liaison, a major UK-French co-production with Leonis Productions for Apple TV+, starring Eva Green and Vincent Cassel. 

The Abstainer by Ian McGuire is represented by Toby Moorcroft on behalf of Judith Murray at Greene & Heaton; Mark O’Rowe is represented by Nick Marston, Camilla Young and Katie Battcock at Curtis Brown. 

*Newen Studios, a subsidiary of the TF1 Group, is a major European player who is rapidly growing in the fields of audiovisual production and distribution, with a multi-genre strategy (fiction, film, animation, television film, documentary, entertainment…).

Present in 8 countries, Newen Studios has more than 30 talented production labels and passionate teams of 600 people who each bring their own unique expertise.

Newen Studios’ programs, as well as third-party programs, are being exported worldwide through its distribution subsidiary Newen Connect, whose activities contribute to promoting the Group’s European culture.