London, 1956. Genius actor and film director Laurence Olivier is about to begin the shooting of his upcoming movie, premiered in 1957 as The Prince and the Showgirl, starring Marilyn Monroe. Young Colin Clark, who dreams on having a career in movie business, manages to get a job on the set as third assistant director.
Colin is a Catholic and George is a poetry-loving Protestant. In Belfast in the 1980s, they could have been enemies, but instead they became business partners. After persuading a mad wig salesman, known as the Scalper, to sell them his leads, the two embark on a series of house calls
Fact-based story about Irish crime-investigating reporter Sinead Hamilton, who invaded the Irish underworld and attempted to expose the illegitimate activities she found. Hampered by the system, a police consort is ineffectual at aiding her despite trying to step outside of the normal bounds. Kevin McNally plays her husband, who hates her activities and the danger in which she places herself. Nonetheless, he grudgingly admires her persistence and encourages her investigation.
Belfast 1972: The politically naive Bernie is trying to bring up a normal family in less than normal surroundings. Her best friend is accidentally shot dead by the IRA, and her neighbours are constantly raided by the army. In this climate of fear she stands up and condemns the murders. Criticising both factions, her call for a ceasefire is interpreted as an attack against the IRA, and as her peace movement takes momentum, she and her family are placed in the frontline.
A young boy and his sister are drawn into one man's obsessive pursuit of his former lover.
The film is set in Northern Ireland shortly after 1994 cease-fire. Hazel is a Protestant and Malachy a Catholic. Romance between them is threatened by Rohan (leader in militant underground and pal of Malachy's brother Padhar), who wants Malachy to be recruited and fight for the cause and by Hazel's brother Jef, who spies on her meetings.
Deeply mentally unbalanced drifter Eunice roams grim northern Britain committing psychosexual serial murders of both men and women while ostensibly searching for an unknown woman named Judith. She spares the life of lonely but kind-hearted gas station cashier Miriam, who abandons her dismal life to follow her damaged new lover. While attempting to hide the evidence of her multiple crimes, Miriam tries to understand Eunice's bizarre quest.
Leo Doyle, a convicted IRA murderer, is released into the community after 14 years in prison on a scheme to rehabilitate former terrorists. He soon finds that the ceasefire has robbed him of both purpose and identity. Relationships with his family are difficult and reach boiling point when they find that he has rekindled his affair with a former fiancee Roisin, now married with three children.
In Ireland, American lawyer Ingrid Jessner and her activist partner, Paul Sullivan, struggle to uncover atrocities committed by the British government against the Northern Irish during the "Troubles." But when Sullivan is assassinated in the streets, Jessner teams up with Peter Kerrigan, a British investigator acting against the will of his own government, and struggles to uncover a conspiracy that may even implicate one of Kerrigan's colleagues.