In the rain-lashed streets of 1970s Belfast, where the crack of gunfire punctuates the mundane hum of schoolyards and corner pubs, love has always been a risky proposition. But in Netflix’s electrifying new drama Trespasses, that risk escalates to a heart-stopping obsession, transforming stolen glances into a powder keg that could obliterate lives, families, and fragile peace. Adapted from Louise Kennedy’s 2022 bestseller—a Women’s Prize for Fiction shortlistee that sold over 300,000 copies worldwide—the four-part series has stormed the streaming charts since its November 8, 2025, global premiere, amassing 42 million viewing hours in its first weekend. Viewers are calling it “perfect,” a “daring masterpiece” that bottles the intoxicating peril of forbidden romance against the brutal canvas of the Troubles. Set in a divided Northern Ireland where Catholic and Protestant lines bleed into every interaction, Trespasses follows Cushla Lavery, a young Catholic schoolteacher, as she tumbles into a clandestine affair with Michael Lavery, a married Protestant barrister defending IRA suspects. What starts as flirtatious tension spirals into a dangerous vortex of passion, politics, and peril, forcing Cushla to confront loyalties that could cost her everything. With chemistry so palpable it borders on the illicit and performances that haunt like ghosts of the past, this isn’t just a love story—it’s a lit fuse in a tinderbox, and audiences can’t look away.

Louise Kennedy’s novel burst onto the literary scene like a Molotov through a stained-glass window, a debut that captured the suffocating intimacy of sectarian strife through the lens of thwarted desire. Born in Holywood, County Down, in 1976, Kennedy grew up in the Troubles’ shadow—her childhood marked by bomb scares, checkpoints, and the ever-present wail of sirens. A former bartender and journalist, she channeled that visceral authenticity into Trespasses, weaving a narrative that’s equal parts erotic charge and elegy for lost innocence. The book follows Cushla, 24, a fluent Irish speaker teaching at a Catholic girls’ school in Andersonstown, a republican stronghold pocked with bullet-riddled murals and burned-out cars. Her life is a tapestry of quiet rebellion: evenings at her family’s pub, The Bridge, where locals drown sorrows in pints and plot in hushed tones; weekends ferrying her deaf-and-blind sister, Gina, through a world that feels increasingly hostile. Enter Michael: charismatic, Oxford-educated, and worlds apart in his leafy Protestant enclave of Knocktern, where he juggles a loveless marriage to a doctor and high-profile cases that pit him against the British state.

The affair ignites innocently enough—a chance encounter at the pub, where Michael’s defense of a local boy accused of planting a bomb draws Cushla’s eye. Their connection is electric: shared smokes in the back alley, illicit drives along the Antrim coast, fevered nights in dingy motels where the outside world’s violence seeps in like damp rot. But Kennedy doesn’t romanticize; she dissects. Cushla’s infatuation blinds her to the chasms—Michael’s children, his wife’s quiet despair, the IRA’s watchful gaze on “traitors” who fraternize across the divide. As bombings escalate and internment without trial fractures communities, the lovers’ secret becomes a trespass on multiple fronts: against faith, family, and the fragile armistice of survival. The novel’s prose, spare yet searing, earned raves for its unflinching gaze—Salman Rushdie called it “tremendous,” while The New York Times deemed it a “masterpiece of compression.” Shortlisted for the Women’s Prize and longlisted for the Booker, it tapped into a hunger for stories that humanize history’s horrors, selling briskly amid renewed interest in the Troubles sparked by podcasts like Women and the Troubles and films like Belfast.

Translating this powder-keg prose to screen was no small feat, but Netflix, in a bold co-production with Channel 4 and Wildgaze Films, assembled a dream team to detonate it. Showrunner Ailbhe Keogan, whose credits include the claustrophobic The Dry and Red Rock, pens a faithful adaptation that clocks in at four taut 60-minute episodes, dropping weekly to build unbearable suspense. “We wanted to honor the book’s intimacy,” Keogan shared in a pre-premiere interview, “while amplifying the era’s cacophony—the boom of bombs, the whisper of informants.” Production, greenlit in August 2024, filmed on location in Northern Ireland from March to July 2025, transforming Belfast’s Falls Road into a time capsule of terraced houses scarred by shrapnel and riot vans. Directors David Evans (Vigil) and Kate Dolan (You Are Not My Mother) helm episodes with a poet’s eye: handheld cams capture the grit of pub brawls, wide shots frame the brooding Mourne Mountains as silent witnesses to lovers’ trysts. The $18 million budget—bolstered by Northern Ireland Screen incentives—funds meticulous period detail: flares and tank tops, Ford Cortinas belching exhaust, a soundtrack blending Van Morrison’s soulful laments with the raw folk of The Dubliners.

At the series’ molten core are Lola Petticrew and Tom Cullen, whose alchemy as Cushla and Michael is nothing short of incendiary. Petticrew, 29, the breakout from The Trial of Christine Keeler and A Gentleman in Moscow, embodies Cushla with a luminous fragility—her wide hazel eyes flickering between defiance and desperation, her Northern lilt cracking under emotional strain. “Cushla’s not a victim; she’s a volcano,” Petticrew said, drawing from her own County Antrim roots to infuse the role with hard-won authenticity. Cullen, 40, fresh off The Wonder and Knightfall, brings Michael to smoldering life: his barrister’s poise masking a man adrift, his touches lingering like accusations. Their chemistry—stolen kisses in fogged-up cars, arguments laced with longing—feels so raw, so forbidden, that intimate scenes required intimacy coordinators to navigate the emotional minefield. “It’s not just sex; it’s surrender,” Cullen noted, crediting chemistry reads that sparked “immediate fire.”

The ensemble elevates the intimacy to epic scale. Gillian Anderson, executive producer and star, steals every frame as Gina, Cushla’s boozy, embittered sister—a gin-soaked force of nature whose rages mask profound isolation. Anderson, channeling her The Crown steel with Sex Education‘s vulnerability, delivers monologues that gut-punch: one rain-soaked tirade about “loving in a place that hates you” has already gone viral. As Cushla’s brother Eamonn, the pub’s volatile heart, Barry Keoghan (Saltburn, The Banshees of Inisherin) brings feral energy, his IRA sympathies clashing with familial bonds in scenes that crackle with menace. Supporting turns shine: Niamh Algar as Cushla’s wry colleague Moira, offering gallows humor amid schoolyard drills; Jonathan Ryan as the Lavery patriarch, a Protestant solicitor whose courtroom eloquence hides domestic frost; and child actors like Lia Williams’ daughter in a poignant subplot about innocence amid atrocity. It’s a who’s-who of Irish talent, with cameos from stalwarts like Colm Meaney nodding to the Troubles’ cinematic legacy.

Visually, Trespasses is a masterclass in atmospheric dread. Cinematographer Suzie Lavelle (Normal People) bathes Belfast in sickly sodium glows—yellow lamps pooling like spilled yolk on wet pavements, shadows elongating like accusations. The Troubles aren’t backdrop; they’re character: Episode 1 opens with the Enniskillen bombing’s echo, a school trip aborted by a car bomb’s roar, drills where girls don gas masks like fairy-tale disguises. Sound design amplifies the unease—the distant thump of mortars, the hiss of police radios, the intimate rustle of lovers’ breaths. Kennedy’s themes—sectarianism as inherited trauma, love as both salve and sabotage—resonate fiercely in 2025, amid Brexit’s border scars and rising global divides. Cushla’s arc probes the feminine toll: teaching Gaelic hymns in a censored classroom, navigating Michael’s world of squash clubs and silent wives, all while her body becomes a battlefield of desire and doubt. “What does it mean to trespass?” Keogan poses. “To cross lines drawn in blood, only to find more on the other side.”

The rollout has been a storm front sweeping screens. Netflix’s teaser—Petticrew’s Cushla locking eyes with Cullen across a crowded courtroom, intercut with riot footage—garnered 35 million views in 24 hours, spiking searches for “Troubles romance.” Episode 1’s drop coincided with Remembrance Day, drawing 18 million global viewers, with spikes in the UK, Ireland, and U.S. Critics are enraptured: The Guardian’s Lucy Mangan called it “an intoxicating, rousing heartbreak,” praising Anderson’s “sour, ragey alchemy” and the series’ “haunting realism.” The Irish Times noted it’s “far more fun than a Troubles drama should be,” blending tension with “unintentional hilarity” in pub antics, though quibbling at “predictable beats.” Esquire dubbed it “your new Irish TV obsession,” a “romance-thriller hybrid” outshining Netflix’s own Say Nothing. Rotten Tomatoes sits at 92% certified fresh, audiences at 96%, with one reviewer gushing, “Chemistry so intense it feels forbidden to watch.”

Social media is ablaze with addiction confessions. On X, #Trespasses trends daily: “Binged Ep 1—heart in throat, tears on tap. Lola and Tom? Volcanic,” one user posted, racking 12K likes. TikToks recreate Cushla’s defiant glares, synced to Sinéad O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares 2 U,” while Reddit’s r/NetflixBestOf threads dissect twists—”Is Michael a mole? Gina’s secret? Mind blown.” Fan edits mash affair scenes with U2’s “With or Without You,” amassing millions. Not without controversy: some Northern Irish voices decry a “pro-republican slant,” echoing posts like “Usual propaganda—PUL bad, CNR saints?” Yet others hail its nuance: “Finally, a Troubles tale that humanizes all sides.” Viewership skews female (68%), 25-44, with international appeal—U.S. audiences drawing parallels to Romeo and Juliet amid modern polarizations.

Yet Trespasses transcends binge bait; it’s a mirror to endurance’s cost. In Cushla’s stolen moments, Kennedy and Keogan interrogate complicity: Does love absolve crossing lines, or deepen the divide? Gina’s unraveling—drowning loneliness in gin—echoes the era’s collateral damage, women as silent sentinels to men’s wars. The finale, a gut-wrenching crescendo of choices amid a botched bombing, leaves threads dangling for potential Season 2 whispers. As Netflix eyes extensions, one thing’s clear: Trespasses has captured Northern Ireland’s soul—raw, resilient, romantic. In a world still drawing battle lines, it reminds us: the most dangerous obsessions aren’t political; they’re the heart’s quiet insurrections. Stream it, and feel the trespass: across divides, into desire, toward a truth as perilous as peace.