The Night They Vanished Cast Announced With Gabrielle Creevy and Callum Scott Howells

Gabrielle Creevy and Callum Scott Howells will lead the cast of The Night They Vanished, a new six-part romantic thriller being produced for Channel 4.

The series is based on Vanessa Savage’s novel of the same name and combines a mysterious disappearance, true crime, family secrets and a developing relationship between two people who do not know whether they can trust each other.

Channel 4’s official cast announcement for The Night They Vanished confirms that filming is now under way, with much of the story taking place in Wales.

Gabrielle Creevy plays Anna

At the centre of the series is Anna, played by Gabrielle Creevy.

Anna has built a life for herself in Cardiff after moving away from the remote coastal village where she grew up.

That apparently settled life suddenly falls apart when she discovers something deeply disturbing online.

Her childhood home has appeared on a true-crime website.

The page claims that the house will become the location of her family’s future deaths.

Anna initially has every reason to assume it is some kind of sick joke, but when she tries to contact her family, she discovers they have vanished.

The police believe the website post is a hoax.

Anna is not so sure.

Callum Scott Howells plays the man behind the website

Callum Scott Howells plays Cai, the man running the true-crime site where the prediction appears.

Howells is best known to many viewers for his performance as Colin in Russell T Davies’ It’s a Sin, one of Channel 4’s most acclaimed dramas of recent years.

Cai insists that he did not create the mysterious page about Anna’s family.

That immediately creates the central tension of the story.

Anna has to decide whether Cai is somebody who can help her understand what has happened, or whether the man behind the website may know considerably more than he is admitting.

Channel 4 describes Cai as an intriguing blind date whose connection with Anna quickly becomes much more complicated once her family disappears.

A romantic thriller with a countdown

The series is written by Angharad Elen and Hannah Daniel.

Rather than operating purely as a conventional missing-person drama, The Night They Vanished mixes its mystery with a developing love story.

The prediction on the website creates a countdown, while Anna is forced back to the village she deliberately left behind.

There she begins confronting old relationships, family history and events from her past that she would rather have kept buried.

The coastal South Wales setting is also an important part of the production, giving the thriller an isolated landscape in which Anna has fewer places to escape from whatever is happening around her.

Tamzin Outhwaite and Steffan Rhodri join the cast

The supporting cast includes several familiar British television faces.

Tamzin Outhwaite plays Anna’s stepmother, Jo, while Steffan Rhodri appears as her father, Idris.

Rhodri is well known for roles including Gavin & Stacey, Death Valley and Men Up, while Outhwaite’s recent work includes The Wives and The Tower.

Matthew Gravelle, Lisa Victoria, Jack Quick, Andrew Lennon, Callum Hymers and Bella Shewan are also part of the ensemble.

The production comes from CliffEdge Entertainment, part of BBC Studios, in association with Channel 4.

From It’s a Sin to a very different Channel 4 role

Howells’ involvement is particularly notable for Channel 4 audiences.

His breakthrough performance in It’s a Sin earned widespread recognition for his portrayal of Colin, a young Welsh man navigating London during the early years of the AIDS crisis.

The Night They Vanished gives him a very different role.

Cai sits directly at the centre of a mystery in which almost every piece of information is potentially unreliable.

The romantic element between Cai and Anna means the audience will also have to judge their relationship while trying to decide whether either character fully understands what is happening.

When will The Night They Vanished air?

Channel 4 has not yet announced a transmission date.

With the six-part series now in production, further information about filming and scheduling is expected later.

What is confirmed is the central premise, the main cast and the fact that the drama will combine mystery, romance and true-crime culture in a story that begins with one deeply unsettling prediction.

For Anna, the message on the website says her family is going to die.

Then they disappear.

And the only person who may be able to help her is the man whose website made the prediction in the first place.