THE SITE FOR DIE HARD CRIME & THRILLER FANS
Features

Irish crime drama North Sea Connection comes to BBC Four

2 Mins read
North Sea Connection Irish crime show

The highly-rated RTÉ crime show North Sea Connection is coming to BBC Four in the UK, with the first two episodes airing from 9pm on Saturday 4 February. It’s an ideal series to take in if you enjoy perilous plot lines set in moody, isolated locations on the far-flung fringes of Europe, and this is a show that combines threads of both Nordic and Celtic crime fiction.

In typical noir fashion, things begin with an unfortunate crime and a cover-up. Ciara Kenny, played by Lydia McGuinness, is the captain of a small fishing trawler out of the fictional town of Roskillane in County Galway. Everything’s mostly above board, apart from the occasional pick-up of contraband cigarettes or alcohol from an offshore buoy for Ciara’s brother, Aidan (Kerr Logan). His dream is to raise the capital to build a seafood packaging facility in the town.

When they’re readying for their next run, a crew member doesn’t show up and instead there’s a replacement – one who seems far too keen on the packages they’re collecting. But an altercation leaves the new crewman dead on the deck and, well, what else is there to do in the world of noir than to tie him to an anchor and send him to Davy Jones’s locker?

As if Ciara wasn’t in over her head already, when a case is opened it’s not tobacco inside but a large quantity of amphetamines.

Irish crime show North Sea Connection
Lydia McGuinness as Ciera Kenny.

Cover-ups like this never go to plan and, as the series progresses, Swedish narcotics detective Tuva Palsson (Alida Morberg) arrives in Roskillane. A shipment of drugs has washed up on the Connemara coast, possibly from Scandinavia, but local policeman Sergeant Egan (Denis Conway) can’t imagine anyone local being involved.

The problem for Ciara now is that a member of the smuggling ring is dead, drugs have been lost, and the gang want payback. And what about Bjorn Matsson, a Swede living in the area who is a little shifty? Bjorn is played by Claes Ljungmark, whom you’ll remember as the infamous and deadly character The Swede in the Danish series Follow the Money.

As Ciara and her family struggle to extricate themselves from the drug smuggling ring, Tuva closes in on the operation. North Sea Connection brings all this intrigue, along with Galway’s sweeping landscapes and North Atlantic stormfronts as a backdrop.

A joint Irish-Swedish production, the programme consists of six 45-minute episodes, and was originally aired in Ireland in November 2022. There is talk of a second season…

Irish crime show North Sea Connection
Tuva (Alida Morberg) is wondering whether or not Egan (Denis Conway) is up to the job.
Irish crime show North Sea Connection
Has Aiden’s ambition put his family in danger? (Kerr Logan)


18 Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Related posts
News

Unforgotten season six is in production

ITV in the UK and Masterpiece on PBS in the US have announced the sixth season of Unforgotten, the hit cold case crime show set in London. Sinéad Keenan and Sanjeev Bhaskar will return in their roles as CDI Jess James and DI Sunny Khan…
Features

The Gone: Kiwi/Irish crime show comes to BBC Four

While the Irish broadcaster RTÉ may not have the resources of the BBC or HBO, it has canny knack for collaborating with producers in other countries to jointly invest in high-quality crime shows. Hidden Assets was surprisingly good, given the unlikely linkup between an Irish…
Features

Prisoner – the Danish crime drama comes to BBC Four

The Killing star Sofie Gräbøl returns to our screens, swapping the knitwear for a prison-issue blue shirt in Prisoner, which begins airing on BBC Four at 9pm on Saturday 24 February 2024. It’s a crime show where the perpetrators are already in prison – but…
Crime Fiction Lover