Louise Kennedy’s “passionate love story”, set amid the “bombs, bullets” and “punishment beatings” of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, was “beautifully told”, said Carol Midgley in The Times. Now her novel has been adapted for the small screen “and, happily, the TV series does not let it down”.
It’s 1975 and, in a small town outside Belfast, Catholic teacher Cushla (Lola Petticrew) is living with her alcoholic mother (Gillian Anderson) and juggling her school job with evening shifts at her brother’s pub. It’s here that she first crosses paths with Michael (Tom Cullen), an older, married Protestant barrister who is known for taking controversial cases on both sides of the sectarian divide. The pair embark on a “lusty affair” – a “Romeo and Juliet-style couple, madly in love but forced to meet in secret”.
With his “tousled hair and tight waistcoat”, Michael is a “dreamy old goat”, said Jack Seale in The Guardian. But it’s Petticrew who “steals the show”, said Michael Hogan in London’s The Standard. She gives an “impressively nuanced performance – courageous yet flawed, wise beyond her years but youthfully idealistic”. She has a “magnetic screen presence” and, when “tragedy strikes”, delivers a “viscerally raw portrait of grief and trauma”.
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I didn’t feel the “supposedly electric connection” between the pair, said Keith Watson in The Telegraph. The age gap made me feel as if Michael was “grooming Cushla rather than charming her”, and the “imbalanced relationship” never quite seemed “plausible”. Despite offering much “food for thought”, the series missed the “emotional mark”.
Occasionally it “tips into cliché” said Nick Hilton in The Independent. Anderson “possibly overdoes the doom-laden drunk act”. But this is balanced by the show’s “sweet, sincere undertone”. “Trespasses” is also “unusually sexy” for a terrestrial TV drama: “this is grown-up fare, in both tone and substance”.
It’s “devastating” at times but it’s “anything but misery porn”, said Hogan in London’s The Standard. “It’s warm, made with love and ultimately uplifting, complete with a spine-tingling coda. A deeply human drama about a highly charged slice of history.”
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