3 hours ago
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It’s cliché to compare a love story to Romeo and Juliet. It’s like saying a detective reminds you of Sherlock Holmes. Yet it’s hard to avoid, watching Channel 4’s drama set in 1970s Northern Ireland. Trespasses follows Cushla Laverty, a 24-year-old Catholic teacher who falls for a swashbuckling Protestant, Michael Agnew. They begin seeing each other secretly, around Michael’s high profile establishment job: he’s an outspoken barrister, who campaigns for justice on behalf of young Catholic boys caught up in police bullying. This puts him, and those close to him, at risk of violent reprisal from both sides. Puts your commute into perspective, eh?
There’s much to admire. The show’s vintage palette for one, dripping with melancholy browns and orange. Was it perpetually autumn in the 70s? Michael and Cushla, played by Tom Cullen and Lola Petticrew from Say Nothing, have chemistry. And then there’s Gillian Anderson, who plays Cushla’s widowed mother, Gina. She steals so many scenes I wonder if she’s been hanging around the Louvre.
Sometimes, when actors ‘do’ accents it’s like someone wearing a fur coat in the supermarket: you can’t pay attention to anything else. And make no mistake, Norn Irish is a fearsomely challenging accent, second only to Newcastle. (When I was learning it at drama school, I had to repeat certain phrases over and over, to key into its particular music. ‘Sloppy Giuseppe’ being the one that sticks in my head.)
Anderson inhabits the role, the diametrical opposite of her candid, adventurous Jean Milburn in Sex Education. It’s also pretty far away from her role as Gillian Anderson, doula to women’s fantasies, following her brilliant book Want. Every woman I know is obsessed with Gillian Anderson. They have tattoos. They lose their minds when a new picture shows up of her in a suit. To them, she represents a flawless combination of intelligence, classic grace and liberated sexuality. Also, Scully from the X Files was an OG.
By contrast, Gina is a sour, curtain-twitching black hole, destroying herself through alcoholism. Anderson uses the supporting part to lethally exude repression, shame and judgment: qualities of despair atmospheric to that time and place. She orders her children to observe the status quo and appease the British. When she learns that her son Eamonn’s wife is five months pregnant, she leaves the dinner table in jealous rage. “Her ma was probably told the second Eamonn pulled out of her,” she spits.
Miraculously, she also brings humour to it. “Are you a love addict?” she scornfully demands of her daughter, after reading a quiz in a magazine. The show has an unexpected dryness, notably in the Father Ted-esque figure of Father Slattery – an intense priest at Cushla’s school, who terrifies the children with inappropriate stories of sectarian violence. It leavens a story that could become heavy.
Trespasses takes on a heartbreaking moral force as it travels. It’s an illustration of how political dogma creeps and hardens, infecting communities. It condemns the fact that in our world, love – and even simple acts of kindness – can be met with violence. It’s not sentimental about romance, either. The crusading, handsome Michael is older and married. He likes female company, a lot. Does that change how we feel? It would be hard to argue that he’s not still a good man.
There is a subtle idea submerged in Trespasses: that obstacles supply oxygen to the wildfire of young love. Obstacles make lovers a team against the world. It’s uncomfortable to admit that sometimes we need unfairness, bad timing, intrusive pasts. If our view is unobstructed, we see more clearly how our beloveds are far from heroic, maybe even not good, a lot of the time. Romeo and Juliet has a similar wisdom, deep inside it.
This is a handsome drama, full of painful beauty. We can’t help but root for Michael and Cushla, who can’t give up their furtive passion. They’re seeking private, humanising joy at a time when acts of betrayal between neighbours were as commonplace as slices of soda bread. It hurts to remember the real context is our recent history. If you liked The Celebrity Traitors, they ain’t got nothing on this lot.
