'Trespasses' Recap: Episode 1

Trespasses airs Sundays at 9:00 pm and is available to stream via the PBS app.
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Tensions are high in Belfast and surrounding towns in Northern Ireland in 1975, as Protestants loyal to Britain and Catholics who want an independent Irish state – and everyone else in between – live in close proximity. Bombings are frequent; some people, like Cushla Lavery’s neighbor, check underneath their cars for explosives before driving. When Cushla arrives to pick up shifts bartending at her brother Eamonn’s pub, which he took over from their late father, on Ash Wednesday, she wipes off the ashes that mark her as a Catholic from her forehead in order to avoid antagonism.

She still gets some from a drunken unionist soldier, who slaps her butt when she walks by. Cushla demands that her brother report him to the local barracks, but Eamonn wants to keep the peace. When the soldier continues to ogle her from across the bar, a man sitting with a whiskey calmly intervenes and successfully calls the soldier’s friends to take him home. 

The man, a lawyer named Michael Agnew, stays for a while, chatting with and charming Cushla.

When Cushla arrives home to the house she shares with her widowed, alcoholic mother Gina, she learns from a sleepy Gina that Michael is from the area, is married to an alcoholic, and is a Protestant who defends Catholics. Gina always found him charming and handsome.

Bartending is not Cushla’s day job: teaching at a Catholic school is. Both an administrator and a priest there stoke hatred and fear of Protestants, singling out Davey McGeown, with his Catholic father and Protestant mother, for special criticism. Cushla does her best to deflect the hate-mongering while keeping her head down. It would be easy to lose her job; a colleague was fired for having an affair and had to leave town after someone wrote to the bishop about her. The married man she was seeing, of course, suffered few consequences.

Cushla drives Davey home one day when he forgets his rain coat. His neighborhood is full of Union Jacks and Protestant kids looking for trouble. They throw rocks at Cushla’s car as she drives away.

Cushla has plenty to deal with at home. She finds her mom passed out in the kitchen in broad daylight when she’s about to leave to bartend and has to cancel her shift, to her great regret: she was eager to see the handsome Michael again.

She finds some fun when her colleague Gerry invites her to a party in Belfast. He picks her up and gets a haranguing from Gina for not coming in to introduce himself first. When he cracks a joke at a military checkpoint on the way, he gets patted down against a wall while another soldier leers at Cushla. After the party, he tries to kiss her but she pulls away. She would like to keep going on outings with him as a friend, however.

When Davey’s dad is brutalized and sent to the hospital by a gang of loyalists, the school calls an assembly. Gerry interrupts the priest’s fiery blaming of Davey’s father for marrying “the enemy” by playing a pacifist song on the guitar and getting the kids to join in. 

Cushla goes out again with Gerry, this time to the theater, where she runs into Michael and sparks a connection. After the show, Gerry explains that Michael defends in court some rabble rousers like those in Davey’s neighborhood. Gerry says Michael is a principled man, but kindly suggests that Cushla would be better off not spending too much time with him. 

Cushla offers to help the McGeowns however she can, giving the eldest, Tommy, her phone number. Gina also does her part, bringing over a pie for the family. As she and Cushla leave, Gina confronts the waiting gang of loyalist kids who often throw dog waste over the fence and cut down the McGeown’s clothesline. They back away from Gina. 

Michael invites Cushla to an evening with his friends when he learns she’s a native Gaelic speaker; Michael and his friends are trying to learn. Cushla lies to her mother that she’s going out with Gerry, then receives some tender attention from Michael when she burns herself on the oven in his friends’ house. She also wins admiration for standing up to one of his stuck-up friends. 

Cushla has Michael drop her off down the block from her home and agrees to attend the Irish language night again. They kiss before he tells her that his “circumstances” are “complicated,” i.e. he’s married, and won’t always be able to get away. That’s mostly fine with her.

Until she again visits the McGeown home upon Davey’s request once his dad returns from the hospital; Davey has told his dad all about his kind teacher. Cushla is shaken by the man’s wounds; his children have to fetch, light, and place his cigarettes in his mouth for him. 

Cushla calls her brother to say she’s too busy to keep the extra shifts she just requested from him. After a week, Michael calls her at home to ask why he hasn’t seen her in the pub, then asks to pick her up even though it’s daylight. She acquiesces against her better judgment, and he drives them to a remote field. 

She tells him about the McGeowns and he urges her to do what she wants no matter what consequences await her; they must all be free to live and speak their minds. He picks flowers from the field and she accepts them, then calls her brother again once she’s home and picks up more bar shifts.

Tommy McGeown calls her at home but hangs up when she tries to talk him out of doing something rash because of his father’s beating. 

The next time Michael is at the pub, he gives Cushla the address of a flat he has in Belfast for when he has court cases. He asks her to come that night. She does, and they spend a blissful night together. 

When Cushla arrives home the next morning beaming, she is immediately accosted by her mother. She says she had car trouble and spent the night at Gerry’s. Gina rants that she’s going to lose her job or have a baby out of wedlock.