Trespasses: The Catholic Teacher and Married British Lawyer Whose Secret Affair Has Detonated into the Year’s Most Addictive, Heart-Stopping Series

BELFAST – November 18, 2025 – What was quietly billed as “a gentle period romance” has detonated into Northern Ireland’s cultural earthquake of the decade. Trespasses, Netflix’s six-part adaptation of Louise Kennedy’s 2022 Booker-longlisted novel, dropped its entire season on Friday, and the province hasn’t slept since. One episode was all it took. The moment Cushla Lavery (Lola Petticrew), a young Catholic schoolteacher in 1975 Belfast, locks eyes across a smoky pub with Michael McAtamney (Tom Glynn-Carney), a married Protestant barrister twice her age, the screen ignites. Their secret affair spirals into a dangerous, magnetic obsession so charged that viewers swear “the chemistry is so electric it hurts.” Social media is a war-zone of sobbing voice notes, 3 a.m. “I finished it” confessions, and fan edits set to Dermot Kennedy that have already clocked 40 million views.

Set against the raw brutality of the Troubles, Trespasses is no soft-focus love story. Cushla teaches Irish to Protestant and Catholic children alike while her alcoholic mother spirals and her brother falls deeper into the IRA. Michael, establishment to his core, defends British soldiers in court by day and risks everything by night to meet Cushla in derelict cottages and fog-choked lanes. Every stolen glance is loaded with the knowledge that discovery means disgrace, violence, or death. “It’s Romeo and Juliet with car bombs,” one Belfast viewer posted, a comparison that instantly went viral.

Petticrew, 27, fresh from Anne Boleyn, delivers a performance of quiet devastation—wide-eyed idealism hardening into desperate courage. Glynn-Carney, best known as Aegon Targaryen in House of the Dragon, is mesmerising as the privileged Michael who finally tastes something he can’t control. Their chemistry is visceral: the first kiss in Episode 2 has been paused, rewound, and dissected frame-by-frame on TikTok under #ThatTrespassesKiss. Helen McCrory’s final screen role as Cushla’s mother Gina is heartbreaking, while Cillian Murphy’s cameo as a chillingly calm IRA commander in Episode 4 left viewers “physically shaking.”

Directed by Lisa Barros D’Sa and Glenn Leyburn (Good Vibrations), the series bathes 1970s Belfast in a palette of cigarette smoke and sodium streetlight, every frame humming with threat. The soundtrack—Van Morrison, The Undertones, and a haunting original score by David Holmes—has shot to the top of Spotify’s TV charts. Critics are unanimous: The Guardian gave five stars, calling it “the most intoxicating British drama since Normal People,” while Variety praised “a love story that feels like it could detonate at any second.”

Northern Ireland itself is obsessed. Pubs in Belfast and Derry have started “Trespasses Tuesdays,” screening episodes with themed cocktails (“The Black & Tan” is apparently lethal). Unionist and nationalist viewers, usually divided on everything, are united in awe—and argument—over whether Cushla and Michael’s love could ever survive the era. The hashtag #TrespassesBelfast has 2.8 million posts, with locals sharing childhood memories of the exact streets where scenes were filmed.

Netflix reports the series hit No. 1 in the UK and Ireland within 12 hours and is now in the global Top 5, with 48 million hours viewed in its opening weekend. “We knew it was special,” said executive producer Michael Parke, “but we didn’t expect it to become a cultural event.”

From quiet period piece to national obsession in one episode flat, Trespasses has done the impossible: it’s made Northern Ireland fall in love, cry, and argue all over again—together. The screen might not crack, but hearts certainly are. Stream it now. You won’t look away.