Forbidden love is the heartbeat of this overwhelming and tragic Belfast drama

Trespasses ★★★★

As a teenager in the 1980s, I didn’t understand why the sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland was referred to as “The Troubles”. Was it meant to be deliberately vague, or was there a touch of the dramatic to it? The news headlines – of bloody bombings and paramilitary murders – offered nothing but tragedy. The term, I eventually learnt, was a historic synonym, stretching back centuries, like so much of Ireland’s history. But I never let go of my deliberation: using The Troubles allowed the overwhelming to be briefly encompassed.

That feeling of the vast and incomprehensible becoming the norm is essential to this four-part British drama. Adapted from Louise Kennedy’s 2022 debut novel of the same name, and set in 1975 outside and in Belfast, the show captures the corrosively brutal divide between the Protestant and Catholic communities.

“Loyalists are hungry for Catholic blood,” warns a priest at the primary school where Cushla Lavery (Lola Petticrew) teaches, while a student’s father, who is Catholic but married to a Protestant, is severely beaten by his neighbours. Everything is divided, violence the governing communication.

The atmosphere is grim, as life in Northern Ireland slowly tips over into asymmetric warfare. At nights, Lola works in the family pub run by her older brother, Eamonn (Martin McCann), where off-duty British soldiers come to drink.

Whether they’re customers or an occupying force is menacingly unclear, but Cushla’s worries are only stoked by her mother, Gina (Gillian Anderson), a widowed alcoholic whose universal scorn is acidic. Cushla’s response, whether heroic or beyond risky, is simple: she falls into an urgent, covert love affair with prominent Protestant barrister Michael Agnew (Tom Cullen).

Love, whether as an act of emotional companionship or an expression of fierce physical desire, is the corrective heartbeat of Trespasses. The intensity between the two is both forceful and a secret. Not only are they on either side of the sectarian divide, even though Michael defends Catholic youths in Protestant-dominated courts, but he is also an older married man with children. The social fault-lines, plus the personal power dynamic, are fraught between the two, but that only spurs them on. Cushla and Michael’s needs are also, you realise, overwhelming.

There are melodramatic touches, whether it’s Michael declaiming for a peaceful future or the romantic montages that offer shorthand for the pair’s happy bond, but the show– written by Ailbhe Keogan and directed by Dawn Shadforth – has the self-awareness to know everyone reacts to the systemic spread of chaos in different ways. Gestures do matter, as does physical touch. It’s clear Cushla and Michael can’t maintain their affair, so the inevitable ramifications – given horrible dimension by an opening flash-forward – hang over their time together. You have to decide whether their optimism is brave or immeasurably foolish.

Trespasses is a drama about what the individual should, or at least should try, to do in the face of hopelessness. Cullen gives Michael an undeniable charisma, while poison leaches off every line Anderson delivers as Gina. But the most memorable performance belongs to Petticrew. Already brilliant as a hardened young IRA operative in a previous Troubles drama, Disney+’s Say Nothing, Petticrew shows you the immense strain and genuine pleasure of escaping, however briefly, a community bent on tearing itself apart.

Trespasses airs at 9.20pm on Wednesdays, and is available to stream on SBS On Demand.

Find out the next TV, streaming series and movies to add to your must-sees. Get The Watchlist delivered every Thursday.