Which Trespasses Character Are You?

Learn More About Trespasses

Trespasses is the new four-part drama adapted from Louise Kennedy's acclaimed novel of the same name, bringing the author's unforgettable characters to the screen for Channel 4 and PBS. Set in Belfast in 1975, at the height of the Troubles, the series follows Cushla Lavery, a young Catholic schoolteacher played by Lola Petticrew, who begins a clandestine affair with Michael Agnew, an older, married Protestant barrister played by Tom Cullen. Their relationship unfolds against a backdrop of sectarian violence, police brutality, and the constant threat that any secret, however personal, can have devastating public consequences.

Gillian Anderson stars as Gina Lavery, Cushla's widowed mother, a woman who copes with grief and instability by retreating into local lore and old stories, often to Cushla's frustration. Martin McCann plays Eamonn, Cushla's more pragmatic brother, who runs the family pub and spends much of the series trying to keep his sister's secrets contained before they put the whole family at risk. The ensemble is rounded out by Daithi Ó Haragáin as Davy McGeown, a young student Cushla mentors and tries to protect amid rising tension at school, and Oisin Thompson as Gerry Harkin, a coworker who becomes one of the only people Cushla can be honest with.

Critics have singled out the show's refusal to treat its central romance as simple escapism. Instead, Trespasses uses the relationship between Cushla and Michael as a lens into how personal choices become inseparable from political ones during periods of sustained conflict. The show doesn't shy away from depicting the era's violence and its effect on ordinary people, and it's been praised for grounding its love story in a specific, well-researched historical moment rather than using the Troubles purely as atmospheric backdrop.

Petticrew's performance has drawn particular attention, following their breakout role in Say Nothing, another acclaimed drama about the same period of Northern Irish history. Anderson, meanwhile, brings a very different register to Gina than her more clinical, controlled roles elsewhere, playing a woman whose instability feels lived-in and specific rather than performative.

If you've been swept up in Cushla's story, this quiz will sort you into the Trespasses character whose instincts, loyalties, and fears most closely mirror your own.

Trespasses joins a small but growing wave of television adaptations examining Northern Ireland's Troubles from deeply personal, character-first angles rather than a purely political or procedural lens. That shift in storytelling approach has coincided with a broader critical reassessment of how the period gets dramatized, favoring the interior lives of ordinary people caught in extraordinary circumstances over the more familiar beats of paramilitary thriller plotting.

Kennedy's original novel was widely praised for its unflinching, unsentimental voice, and the television adaptation has largely preserved that quality by resisting the urge to soften Cushla and Michael's relationship into a straightforward romance. Their connection is presented with real ambivalence, tender in places and genuinely reckless in others, which gives the four-episode structure a tightly wound, slow-burn tension that builds steadily toward the show's devastating final act.