Adaptations of popular novels for the big or small screen are tricky.
Readers build a certain picture of the story in their minds and there's a real risk your interpretation can alienate them.
But it certainly helps to have the original author involved in the production.
Channel 4 would seem to have an advantage, therefore, for its Northern Ireland Troubles drama 'Trespasses' whose author Louise Kennedy is onboard as an executive producer.
Adapted for the screen by Ailbhe Keogan, the four part miniseries tells the story of a doomed love affair between a Catholic primary schoolteacher and an unconventional Protestant lawyer in early 1970s Belfast.
Lola Petticrew's Cushla lives with her alcoholic mum, Gillian Anderson's Gina Lavery while the city wriggles under the grip of a bitter sectarian conflict that is fuelled by political instability.
The IRA, INLA, UDA and UVF are engaged in a war that also involves the British Army and the Royal Ulster Constabulary and exacts a huge toll on everyone.
Shootings, bombings and sectarian tensions are a norm.
Security barriers operate at the top and bottom of the city's main shopping thoroughfare Royal Avenue and those who do socialise are wary of loose lips which can be just as dangerous as bombs.
When she is not teaching, Cushla sometimes works in The Anchor Bar, the pub owned by her brother Martin McCann's Gerry, which is frequented by wannabe Protestant/loyalist hard men like Paul Mallon's Fidel and occasionally by boorish British soldiers.
There she meets Tom Cullen's suave solicitor Michael Agnew who has a high media profile because, despite being Protestant, he represents Catholic youths accused of being in the IRA and who allege police brutality.
Michael initially flirts with Cushla and vice versa and while she is charmed into going out on dates by Oisin Thompson's fellow schoolteacher Gerry Harkin, her path crosses with the solicitor during a night out at the theatre.
Before long, both of them are embarking on an intense love affair.
The catch, though, is Michael is married which would be particularly frowned upon in Northern Ireland's conservative churchgoing society.
Although he is happy to parade Cushla in front of his liberal, upper middle class friends, who include Barry Ward's flinty journalist Victor McIntyre, their affair is kept secret from the rest of society.
And while Cushla is encouraged to teach Irish to this group, details of Michael's home life are kept from his mistress.
Hanging about with Michael brings Cushla to the attention of the RUC Special Branch and Frank Blake's sinister detective, nicknamed the Disco Peeler.
Michael is also not liked by the IRA who he regularly criticises in media interviews and by loyalists.
When Cushla isn't having trysts with Michael in his flat or tending to Gina when she is slumped in a gin induced haze, she and Gerry are encountering appalling sectarian bigotry and class snobbery in their school from David Hanly's principal Bradley and Gary Lydon's Catholic priest Father Slattery.
This is often directed at Cushla's sweet natured pupil, Daithi O Haragain's Davy McGeown whose mother, Emily Taaffe's Betty is a Protestant and whose family are harassed on the loyalist housing estate where they live because his dad is a Catholic.
Davy's father, Andrew Porter's Seamie is savagely beaten which draws Cushla and Gina into the McGeown's lives as they try to support the struggling family.
While being supportive of Davy, Cushla also encourages the oldest boy, Conlaoch Gough-Cunningham's Tommy to pursue his studies at A'Level and explore his love of literature, giving him books like Thomas Hardy's 'Jude the Obscure'.
But will the sectarian conflict raging in Belfast consume the McGeowns and crush their aspirations?
Can Cushla keep her affair with Michael a well guarded secret from Gina and others and avoid a broken heart?
And will Michael's high media profile make him a target?
'Trespasses' is a curious beast of a drama.
There are many things it gets right - particularly the casting of Petticrew and Cullen as the lovers.
However there are many things that it gets wrong - not least Anderson's woeful attempt at a Belfast accent which is so ear scraping that this Belfast born and raised reviewer actually had to put the subtitles on to ensure he fully understood her.
The four episodes are very well directed by Dawn Shadforth who cut her teeth shooting impressive videos for Moloko, Garbage, Basement Jaxx, Kylie Minogue, Oasis, The Streets and Florence and the Machine among others.
It is also beautifully lit by cinematographer Ryan Kernaghan who bathes nighttime images of Belfast in striking amber.
Production designer Gillian Devenney's period detail is spot on - ramming home just how weird and inhibiting life was in Northern Ireland during the Troubles and how grim the decor was in many homes in the 1970s.
There's a smart soundtrack too curated by David Holmes featuring needle drops from Dusty Springfield, Van Morrison, Andy Kim, Lonnie Donegan and Astrud Gilberto.
McCann, Thompson, O Haragain, Gough-Cunningham, Blake, Taaffe, Lalor Roddy as Anchor Bar regular Jimmy McKenna and Lorcan Cranitch as Gina and Cushla's neighbour, Sergeant Reid are all good value.
However it's hard to escape the fact that Anderson is saddled for much of the miniseries with a pretty limited role as a middle aged lush.
Hanly and Lydon's characters also really grate.
Their bald bigotry in front of children under the age of 11 in the classroom and school assembly jars and their characters are incredibly one dimensional.
As good as Cullen is - and it has to be acknowledged he does a really good job nailing a posh Belfast accent - you can't help thinking Michael is a bit of a creep in the way he pursues Cushla and treats his wife.
And that's a problem if you're meant to invest in its central characters in the same way audiences did with the intense relationship between Marianne and Connell in the adaptation of Sally Rooney's 'Normal People'.
Northern Ireland's complex and deadly politics also become a bit muddled as events unfold in the latter episodes to the extent that you can understand why audiences outside Northern Ireland might be confused, while those from the region might be unconvinced.
Watching 'Trespasses' is, therefore, a frustrating experience.
There are loads of good things in there but having recently re-watched Pat O'Connor's haunting Troubles romantic movie 'Cal,' which is also about a love affair, it pales in comparison.
There isn't so much one fly in this soup but several.
('Trespasses' was broadcast in the UK on Channel 4 between November 9-12, 2025, with all episodes made available for streaming on All4 on November 9, 2025)
If you were to pick out one of the most outstanding directors to emerge from Australia in the past 14 years, then surely Justin Kurzel's name would come up?
The South Australian born director and husband of Essie Davis has given us a series of jaw dropping films from the real life murder tale 'Snowtown' in 2011 to 'Macbeth' with Michael Fassbender four years later and 'Assassin's Creed' which also starred the Irishman.
Then there was 'The True History of the Kelly Gang' with George Mackay in 2019 and 2021's superb psychological drama 'Nitram' with Caleb Landry Jones.
Last year he delivered the much admired crime thriller 'The Order' with Jude Law, Nicholas Hoult and Alison Oliver.
And now this year, he's dabbled for the first time in television drama, helming a five episode miniseries for Amazon Prime in Australia, North America and New Zealand which has also aired on BBC2 in the UK and RTE2 in Ireland.
'The Narrow Road To The Deep North' is an adaptation of Richard Flanagan's highly acclaimed Booker Prize winning novel of the same nine.
Epic in ambition and sweep, the miniseries jumps between three timelines in the life of its main character, Dr Dorrigo Evans.
Played by Jacob Elordi as a young man and Ciaran Hinds in his latter years, we see Dorrigo as a young medical student preparing to be shipped out to fight the Japanese in the Second World War, then as a prisoner of war and later as a respected surgeon reflecting on his life and wrestling with the guilt of having survived the horrors of war towards the end of his career.
In his youth, Elordi's Dorrigo is engaged to Olivia DeJonge's well connected Ella but also becomes romantically entangled with his uncle's young wife, Odessa Young's Amy Mulvaney while visiting them in Tasmania.
Not long afterwards in the jungles of Japan, Dorrigo and his Australian comrades are captured and he finds himself leading a group of prisoners who are forced to build a railway while being maltreated by their captors.
Later, we see Hinds' Dorrigo in the 1980s betray Heather Mitchell's Ella, now his wife, with another affair - this time with Essie Davis's Lynette Maison.
Skipping between these three timelines, Kurzel and his screenwriter Shaun Grant build a complex picture of a very damaged man.
Dorrigo's philandering hints at deep psychological scars even before he leaves for the front.
But they become really apparent as he cheats on Ella later in life.
Oddly his dalliances with Amy and Lynette in the pre-war and post-war timelines feel like a respite from the horrors he and his Australian comrades are subjected to as prisoners.
The savagery of their treatment veers into the territory of body horror as emaciated soldiers - some of whom suffer from malaria and dysentery - are literally worked to the bone or are savagery beaten.
In one case, Dorrigo has to amputate the leg of a soldier in the most unsanitary of conditions.
Elordi and Hinds are terrific as the older and younger versions of Dorrigo - the former using his matinee idol looks to mesmerising effect and the latter bringing the weight of experience and trauma to the time while capturing his character's arrogance.
The cast, however, are uniformly great.
Simon Baker has never been better as Dorrigo's cuckolded uncle Keith Mulvaney.
DeJonge and Mitchell are superb as Ella - the former full of ambition and high hopes for her future with Elordi's character and the latter sadly all too aware later in life of her husband's philandering ways.
Young and Davis are effective as the women who become Dorrigo's objects of his desire - the former more invested in him than the latter.
Dan Wyllie puts in a good shift as Lynette's wronged husband Rick who is also well aware of the betrayal and is willing to bite back.
Show Kasamatsu catches the eye during the Second World War sequences as the conflicted Major Nakamura - a Japanese officer Dorrigo tries to reason with and strike a chord with.
Taki Abe is terrifying as Colonel Kota who goads his troops into brutalising the prisoners.
Thomas Weatherall, Ewen Leslie and Sean Murphy impress as Dorrigo's fellow prisoners of war Frank Gardiner, Edward Landsbury and Gallipoli Von Kessler.
Kurzel teams up with cinematographer Sam Chiplin who brilliantly shifts from bright palettes in the pre-war section to much darker ones in the other sections.
The darker images give the miniseries a gothic quality and hint at the torment that Dorrigo experiences as a prisoner and in later life as he grapples with survivor's guilt.
'The Narrow Road To The Deep North' is a visually rich and appropriately brooding adaptation of Flanagan's book.
Unlike 'Trespasses' there is not one bum note - every detail in the production and performance is spot on.
Every character flaw is properly explained, so you become much more invested in Dorrigo than Michael in the Channel 4 drama.
It's also a mature study of the horrors of war that manages to be profoundly moving, without ever soft soaping its central character's flaws.
The miniseries confirms Kurzel as a director of great import.
But it also makes a convincing case that Elordi, Baker, Davis and especially Hinds are actors who really ought to treasure more.
('The Narrow Road To The Deep North' was broadcast in the UK on BBC2 between July 20-August 17, 2025, with all episodes made available for streaming on the iPlayer on July 20, 2025)
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