A model for turbulent skin friction, proposed by Orlandi & Jimenez, involving consideration of quasi-streamwise vortices in the cross-stream plane, is used to study the effect on the skin friction of oscillating the surface beneath the boundary layer in the spanwise direction. Using an exact solution of the Navier–Stokes equations, it is shown that the interaction between evolving, axially stretched, streamwise vortices and a modified Stokes layer on the oscillating surface beneath, leads to reduction in the skin friction, the Reynolds stress and the rate of production of kinetic energy, consistent with predictions based on experiments and direct numerical simulations.