Love is inconvenient, or so the poets say. It blooms at the most difficult of times and between the most unlikely of people. That is the basic tension of romantic dramas – from Gone with the Wind to The Summer I Turned Pretty – and demonstrates why the brutal reality of 20th century Ireland proves such an evocative backdrop for new Channel 4 series Trespasses.
It’s 1975 – right at the peak of the Troubles – and Cushla (Lola Petticrew) lives in a small town outside of Belfast. She works hard: doting on her alcoholic mother Gina (Gillian Anderson), teaching at a Catholic school, and helping her brother run the family pub.
It’s on a shift there that she first encounters Michael Agnew (Tom Cullen) a smooth, older lawyer; a Protestant who has developed a reputation for defending young men accused of being part of the IRA. They strike up an affair that challenges the propriety of 1970s Ireland: not only are they on different sides of the sectarian divide, but Michael is married. “I’m a grown woman who’s entitled to a private life,” Cushla implores her mother, but as her squeeze’s political advocacy becomes ever more controversial, Cushla must confront the danger she’s placing her entire family in.
Adapted from a 2022 novel by Louise Kennedy, this is an elegant, tightly constructed four-episode series. Last year, Petticrew, who uses they/them pronouns, led an adaptation of Patrick Radden Keefe’s Say Nothing, a sweeping look at the same turbulent time, and here they cement their standing as one of the country’s finest young performers.
Cushla sits somewhere between ingénue and cynic. At times she seems alive to the broiling context of the era (“I’d rather art without the suffering,” she deadpans against her suitor’s romantic sensibilities), yet, concurrently, she lurks by the telephone like a teenager. It takes a specific presence to make both sides of the character compelling and realistic. Cullen, meanwhile, plays Michael as a tragic ideological hero – “good old Michael, defending the indefensible,” snipes his old friend Victor (Barry Ward) – whose intrigue with a young barmaid is accepted rather than interrogated.
The Troubles have become a frequent backdrop for coming-of-age stories, whether that’s a TV show like Lisa McGee’s Derry Girls, a film like Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast, or a book like Anna Burns’ Milkman. Perhaps this is merely a function of the success of expatriate Irish writers, or possibly the Catholic/Protestant divide creates a Romeo and Juliet dynamic that appeals to tales of forbidden love. Either way, audiences are now well adjusted to depictions of those days, and Trespasses, under the stewardship of veteran music video director Dawn Shadforth, is full of lovingly recreated period detail. If it occasionally tips into cliché – Gillian Anderson possibly overdoes the doom-laden drunk act – it is counterbalanced by a sweet, sincere undertone.
Yet while Cushla gives us a likeable, gentle protagonist, the title of the show hints at something else. Forgive us our trespasses. And for a terrestrial drama, Trespasses is unusually sexy. “You have a Fenian fetish,” Cushla purrs into the ear of her lover as they writhe on the floor of his secret pied-à-terre. That it works as a lightly erotic drama is a function of the show’s desire to keep Michael’s sleaze at arm’s length (which inhibits some of the tension), but it also adds some spice to the mix. It feels like a rare primetime show on British telly that isn’t simply trying to play to the average member of a focus group. This is grown-up fare, in both tone and substance.
So even if this ground has been trodden already, Trespasses has enough quality to make it distinctive. On the basis both of their performance here, and America’s taste for young Irish actors – from Saoirse Ronan to Paul Mescal – it won’t be long before Petticrew is lighting up Hollywood. It is a captivating performance that elevates this compelling meditation on formative love.
