After almost a decade of playing supporting parts in lesser-known projects, Lola Petticrew’s career has picked up speed with the propulsive intensity of a rocket launched into space. The past two years saw Petticrew first garner widespread praise and award nominations for their exceptional starring turn in 2024’s historical miniseries Say Nothing. Prominent acclaim again followed their co-leading role in this summer’s Furious, to the point that the Hulu show’s first season seems poised to become the actor’s mainstream breakout. Trespasses further cements Petticrew as one of their generation’s most riveting performers. Based on the 2022 fiction novel of the same name by author Louise Kennedy, the four-episode miniseries (provided for review in its entirety) is simultaneously a doomed romantic drama and a nuanced social thriller as inescapably harrowing as it is delicately heartfelt. Although Trespasses and Say Nothing are both set in Northern Ireland circa the 1970s, it’s a coincidence that Petticrew has starred in two separate fictionalized depictions of the Troubles within as many years. In terms of narrative focus and intent, Trespasses humanizes a very different experience from the same time period.
What Is ‘Trespasses’ About?

Violence informs every facet of schoolteacher Cushla Lavery’s (Petticrew) small town. Mandatory checkpoints, surveillance, and the implicit threat of further bloodshed constantly hovers over the residents’ daily lives, as forcibly normalized as going to work or buying groceries. Cushla’s pre-teen students have acclimated to practicing bomb drills; her adult neighbors jump at the smallest shadow, keeping their heads down and their mouths shut. As for Cushla, she intervenes on behalf of the unjustly tormented whenever she can, but doesn’t stray too far from her own routine of teaching, picking up night shifts at the family pub, and tending to her widowed mother, Gina (Gillian Anderson). Michael Agnew (Tom Cullen) offers the exact physical and intellectual disruption Cushla subconsciously — then actively — craves. Married, older, and a Protestant, the barrister who strives to change the system from within is despised by all sides: the Irish Republican Army (IRA), the English occupying Ireland, and the unarmed but furious Protestant loyalist and Catholic nationalist communities, respectively. Cushla and Michael are as star-crossed as a duo can be, with all the lethal dangers that finding love in this specific hopeless place draws — especially once their cautious indiscretions give way to riskier passions.
‘Trespasses’ Riveting Performances and Character-Driven Focus Avoid Historical Fiction Stereotypes

Providing more details would spoil key moments, but rest assured that Trespasses isn’t a traditional adultery melodrama. Nor does it reduce the Troubles to a background set piece proliferated with ill-defined characters who serve as vehicles for profoundly complex themes; the framework’s wider scope and the immediate story’s intimate, character-driven specificity work in tandem. Most projects about historical wars, the Troubles or otherwise, usually operate in a male-dominated arena. Trespasses’ behind-the-scenes creative efforts are spearheaded by women. Writer Ailbhe Keogan (Bad Sisters) and director Dawn Shadforth’s (Apples Never Fall) jettison the stereotypes commonly associated with age-gap romances and glamorous ’70s period pieces in favor of social consciousness, grounded interpersonal exchanges, and an efficiently paced, urgently tense atmosphere. For one, the duo approaches Cushla’s sexual discovery with explicit frankness and forward-thinking positivity. The same emotional dexterity and unflinching lack of gendered exploitation applies to the Troubles’ social, cultural, and institutional ramifications for every character with an ostracized or non-conforming identity: religious propaganda, class conflict, mob mentalities, disillusioned young men snatched up by the jaws of radicalized rebellion, and staring directly into the eyes of potential death or sexual assault. Many characters only survive this level of destabilization, bigotry, grief, and terror by reshaping their existence around it. In some cases, no matter how oppressive and fraught the circumstances, those innocuous day-to-day responsibilities — jobs, eating, parenting, etc. — remain fundamentally unchanged.

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‘Trespasses’ Gives Petticrew and Anderson Room To Shine

Betty, Gina, and Cushla talking in a kitchen in TrespassesImage via Channel 4 and PBS

Beyond its impressively three-dimensional foundations, Trespasses’ triumph rests upon the shoulders of its marvelous cast. Cullen could easily overplay his hand by playing the kind of man who acts upon the power imbalance his charisma affords him, but Michael navigates an exceedingly tricky line between enigmatic and outspoken, sincere ideology and flawed romanticism, privileged and under threat. Anderson can add yet another career highlight to her extraordinary resume. She captivates with the magnetism of a black hole, infusing Gina’s external and self-inflicted demons with understated elegance, wise awareness, and raw tragedy — as well as allowing viewers a few glimpses of the witty, defiant firecracker Gina must’ve been before her deterioration into world-weary mourning and alcoholic dependence.

Petticrew, meanwhile, delivers another astonishing tour de force; this one sneaks up on viewers before stabbing us straight through the ribs with a rusting blade. Petticrew’s command over nuanced human contradictions renders Cushla as a multifaceted adult woman both outside and within her romance. Trespasses’ fictional heroine is at once self-assured, uncertain, pragmatic, and open-hearted. She’s no stranger to her interconnected longings, let alone the situations denying her those goals long before she can pursue them. Cushla chases an ill-advised and addictive passion because Michael makes her feel giddily empowered and alive, only to second-guess, with ashamed vulnerability and bitter dread, whether Michael has taken advantage of a girlish naivety she wasn’t aware she might still possess. This is a less obviously fraught role compared to Furious or Say Nothing, but we still don’t dare to look away from Petticrew — lest we miss a single transcendent moment. Trespasses premieres September 20 on all PBS platforms.

Release Date

2026 – 2025-00-00

Network

Channel 4

Directors

Dawn Shadforth

Writers

Ailbhe Keogan

Pros & Cons

Lola Petticrew’s astonishing work leads a phenomenal cast.
The series’ forward-thinking and character-driven focus avoids playing into tired genre clichés.
‘Trespasses’ narrative neither minimizes the Troubles nor over-sensationalizes the conflict for unrealistic drama.