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Police Service of Northern Ireland
Probationer Constable Grace Ellis
Played By: Siân Brooke
- Empty Nest: She misses Cal terribly after he moves to Manchester for university.
- Friend to All Children: She's especially good at interacting with kids due to her previous experience as a social worker.
- Naïve Newcomer: Zig-zagged. Unlike Annie and Tommy, who appear to have joined not long after finishing school or university, Grace worked for ten years as a social worker before joining the police, so she's accustomed to being in a public-facing role that involves intervening in dangerous situations. Stevie gives her a bit more leeway than the other tutor constables do with their probationers, but he still thinks that she's naïve for believing that they can help any of the people they come into contact with beyond what they can do for them on the day.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: She's usually very calm and collected, so that's how you know it's serious when she comes at the MI-5 operatives who flee the scene after Gerry is shot yelling at them and ready to shoot.
Probationer Constable Annie Conlon
Played By: Katherine Devlin
- Blood Knight: After she freezes up after being punched by Mo McIntyre, she makes a point of confronting him the next time she sees him, and after that seems to actively relish the prospect of heading into a nightclub to break up a bar fight.
- Fair Cop: Is very obviously good-looking, and has to deal with a lot of gross comments from creeps as a result.
- Minority Police Officer: Annie is a Twofer Token Minority at her job by virtue of being a woman and a Catholic in the PSNI. She has to contend with death threats as a result of the latter.
- Passionate Sports Girl: She plays camogie in her spare time.
- Vomiting Cop: Throws up after getting punched in the face by Mo McIntyre.
Probationer Constable Thomas "Tommy" Foster
Played By: Nathan Braniff
- I Choose to Stay: In "Love the One You're With", he decides to leave the Fast Track programme and stay on as a response cop.
- In-Series Nickname: Aisling has him saved in her phone as "Tommy Kill House" since they met while doing their final practical exam at Garnerville.
- Naïve Newcomer: Played Straight. Tommy's parents are both academics at Queen's and Tommy's main motivation for joining the police was to see if the academic principles of his criminology degree could be applied to the real world.
- Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure: Gerry is disgusted when Tommy admits he's never heard of Johnny Cash or Kris Kristofferson.
- You Need to Get Laid: In "This Too Shall Pass", Annie tells him that he's clearly in need of "a ride" and prompts him to ring up Aisling to ask her out on a date.
Police Constable Stephen "Stevie" Neil
Played By: Martin McCann
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Angst? What Angst?: Subverted. In "The Q Word", he reassures Grace that the fact that he's kept Sarah's death private from the rest of their colleagues doesn't mean that he isn't coping with life outside work and he's happy spending time with his siblings and his dogs. However, the second series shows that his feelings for Grace are leading to him trying to protect her at the cost of doing their jobs properly because he doesn't want to experience the pain of losing someone close to him all over again. - The Lost Lenore: In "The Q Word", he tells Grace that his wife, Sarah, died from cancer almost decade prior to the events of the first series.
- Massive Numbered Siblings: Downplayed. He mentions his "brothers and sisters" to Grace, suggesting that he has at least two of each.
- Thousand-Yard Stare: Gets one of these when he and Grace have to attend a suspicious death of a terminally ill cancer patient that reminds him of Sarah's death.
Police Constable Gerard "Gerry" Cliff
Played By: Richard Dormer
- AM/FM Characterization: Is a fan of Outlaw Country Music artists like Johnny Cash and Kris Kristofferson, which is something of an ideological match for his reputation within the PSNI.
- Big Brother Mentor: To several police officers including Jen, who made her feel like she could be a real police officer and motivates her to enter the fray and take out the criminal who shot Gerry.
- Connected All Along: Gerry and Nicola worked together in Special Branch in the past.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Comes off as a bit rough around the edges, but he goes out of his way to help his mentally ill Childhood Friend, Happy Kelly by arresting him for public intoxication so that he doesn't have to be alone. This leads to Sandra joking about him being unable to make it home without making "mercy arrests."
- Too Good for This Sinful Earth: Jen tells Gerry that her mother always thought that he was irresponsible and not a team player. After Gerry's death, Nicola admits that Gerry was in fact "too good" because his desire to find out the truth at any cost got him killed and traumatised Jen in the process.
Police Constable Jennifer "Jen" Robinson
Played By: Hannah McClean
- Blackmail: Jen threatens to give Annie negative feedback on her appraisal, which could mean failing her probation altogether, if Annie tells anyone about Jen failing to perform a stop-and-search on an Op-Guilliver-Nominal. She herself is on the receiving end of it when Helen finds out she's having an affair with Jonty.
- Break the Haughty: The trauma of Gerry's shooting and death breaks Jen's selfish demeanor and leads her to admit her own selfishness and fear, and resigns from the police.
- Dirty Coward: She's too scared to be an effective police officer, to the immense frustration of her superiors and the rest of her colleagues. After Gerry is shot and later dies of his injuries, she finally admits this and resigns. But not before coming to his aid and killing the criminal who shot him.
- Laser-Guided Karma: After blackmailing Annie in order to cover for her incompetence, it's implied that Helen blackmails Jen over her affair with Jonty to get her to help cover for Annie breaking a suspect's nose in the process of an arrest.
- Nepotism: Jen manages to a score a Nepotism double-whammy. She's only on the Fast Track programme because her mother is a Chief Superintendent and she's using her affair with Jonty so she can avoid any hard or dangerous work as much as possible.
- The Stool Pigeon: Spreads rumours about Annie coming into work hungover, something which she doesn't actually have any proof of beyond seeing Annie coming into work looking tired and drinking an energy drink.
- Took a Level in Kindness: Takes a substantial one in her introduction in season two. She now works as a solicitor and has become good friends with Jerry's friend Happy. She ends up working on a cold case that brings Happy and an undercover RUC some much needed closure and healing.
- What You Are in the Dark: After Gerry gets shot, she could've stayed put as he told her to and called for backup. Instead, inspired by Gerry, she steps into the fray, shoots and kills the man who shot Gerry, renders first-aid and stays by his side.Police Sergeant Helen McNally: She went through that gate.
Police Constable Shane Bradley
Played By: Frank Blake
- The Dragon: He gets brought into the section by Canning to act as his eyes and ears on the ground.
Police Constable Aisling Byrne
Played By: Dearbháile McKinney
- Jumped at the Call: She volunteers for a temporary transfer to Blackthorn to boost the police presence at the Mount Eden estate after Dixon is murdered.
Custody Sergeant Sandra Cliff
Played By: Andi Osho
- Happily Married: To Gerry.
- Minority Police Officer: She's African-British. Based on her accent, Sandra transferred to Northern Ireland from the mainland UK. Sandra confirmed in "Love the One You're With" that she grew up in London.
Police Sergeant Helen McNally
Played By: Joanne Crawford
- Career Versus Man: Declan, Helen's ex-husband, eventually left her because he couldn't cope with the stress caused by the death threats Helen was receiving.
- Expose the Villain, Get His Job: She's the one who tells Chief Superintendent Robinson about Jonty's off-the-record dealings with MI5. After Jonty is forced to resign, she's promoted to his old position as Inspector.
- Expository Hairstyle Change: In "Full Moon Fever", her hair changes back and forth between tidy and out-of-shape depending which of the two timelines her scenes in the episode take place in.
- It's All My Fault: When she gets the full story from Annie about how she broke a suspect's nose during an arrest, Helen says that it's her fault because she should never have sent Annie into such a volatile situation with only Jen for backup.
- Minority Police Officer: Like Annie, she is a Catholic female officer, and has dealt with death threats in the past.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: In the first episode, she tells the probationers that she won't hesitate to fail all three of them if they don't shape up, but she takes her role as their mentor seriously. She gives Annie candid advice about how to deal with death threats and reassures her after she freezes up after getting clocked during a stop-and-search. She also calls out Jonty for his affair with Jen but gives him a chance to end it himself, saying that he can blame her if he wants to, before she makes a formal complaint.
Detective Sergeant Murray Canning
Played By: Desmond Eastwood
- The Friend No One Likes: Pretty much no one likes him due to his arrogant and dickish personality and his misogynistic views towards women.
Police Inspector David "Jonty" Johnston
Played By: Jonathan Harden
- Bad Cop/Incompetent Cop: In season 1, his poor handling of the people under his command, his failure to properly document his interactions with MI-5 counter-terrorism, and his affair with Jen—whose mother is his superior officer— show him to be a push-over and incompetent. Jen herself even lampshades that he's "weak" and took advantage of him when she finally comes clean. It eventually leads to his removal as station chief after Gerry's death]) and [[spoiler:was reassigned to the police training academy by the start of Season 2.
- Da Chief: Is in charge of Blackthorn police station, and has to liaise with counter-terrorism to deal with their OOB orders on his patch.
- Pulled from Your Day Off: Initially refuses to come in on his night off-rota when Helen calls to tell him that she dropped three Article 2 calls, which resulted in a member of the public being killed, but changes his mind when he hears that Jen, who he's been having an affair with, took a punch to the face while on patrol.
Barney
Played By: Frankie McCafferty
- The Voice: He's only heard as the voice on the other end of the officers' radios. That is, until "Love the One You're With", where we see him manning the control room.
Chief Superintendent Nicola Robinson
Played By: Andrea Irvine
- Connected All Along: In "Where I Want to Be" she reveals to Jen that she played a part in the cover up of the RUC's foreknowledge of the car bomb that killed Happy's father and brother.
- Da Chief: Reports directly to the Chief Constable, and is the most senior authority figure seen on the show.
- I Did What I Had to Do: She feels that her work downsizing Special Branch operations in The '90s was part of bringing The Troubles to an end.
- You Do Not Want To Know: She tells Jen that she's better off not knowing the truth about past events of The Troubles, and not just because of her own direct involvement in the cover up of the chip shop bombing. She feels that complete truth and reconciliation would be "too much" for the public to handle.
The Royal Ulster Constabulary
Robin Graham
Played By: Derek Thompson
- Morton's Fork: As handler in Special Branch in 1978, an informant warned him about a bomb attack that was going to happen. Recognising that he couldn't do anything to prevent the attack without compromising his source, he felt he had no choice but to let it happen.
- Was It Really Worth It?: His justification for not preventing a bomb attack is that the source he was protecting was able to continue providing him with information that saved many more lives over several years. But, in the end, when he meets the man whose father and brother were killed by the bomb, he admits that it wasn't worth it.
Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland
Geraldine Gilroy
Played By: Aoibheann McCann
Geraldine: You don't much like me, do you?
Helen: I think you're the hindsight police.
- "Not So Different" Remark: When she's called in to take reports about the incident at the pharmacy in "The Iceberg", she tells Helen that they're both on the same side and that they both agree that the Police are operating in an almost impossible situation with insufficient resources to prevent crime.
- Only Bad Guys Call Their Lawyers: Dissuades Helen from calling her Fed rep by saying it will mean keeping the rest of the section in the station for several hours after a particularly difficult nightshift has already ended while they wait for the rep to arrive.
MI-5
Joseph
Played By: Nabil Elouahabi
- But Not Too Foreign: Has the physical appearance of a Middle Eastern/North African person, but it otherwise is a British man.
- I Gave My Word: Averted. He allows James and Mo to be arrested instead of extracting them as he promised when evidence that could remove him from his leadership role is held over his head.
- Lack of Empathy: He only cares about the mission and not about innocent people who might get hurt. This is best demonstrated when he lets out a Precision F-Strike after Sully—Eoin O'Sullivan—the man who shot Gerry, is shot and killed.note
- Noodle Incident: What happened that led to the scar on his face?
- Scars Are Forever: He has scar tissue around his right eye.
- The Needs of the Many: The reason he issues OOBs that hinder the local police and why he allows a gun deal to go through. The operations he mounts have the potential to diminish or wipe out criminal and terrorist organizations that operate within the country and internationally.
The McIntyres and Known Associates
James McIntyre
Played By: John Lynch
- Even Evil Has Standards: Punches Mo when it looks like he's about to hit Annie in front of him. He later nearly beats Mo to death when a police officer gets shot.
- Horrible Judge of Character: After Gerry is shot and later dies, he thinks that the counter-terrorism group he made deal with will get him and his family out. Instead, their location is given to the police and they are arrested after video of the shooting is held over group's leader's head.
- I Did What I Had to Do: He went to work for MI5 to ensure his family's survival.
- Know When to Fold 'Em: After it becomes clear that there's no escape, he and Mo give themselves up rather than fight.
- Pragmatic Villainy: How the man operates and why he willingly works with MI5. Unlike Mo, he knows that it's better to stay under the radar and avoid antagonizing the police.
Tina McIntyre
Played By: Abigail McGibbon
- Mafia Princess: She's James McIntyre's estranged wife, who seems to be living quite comfortably. She still does the odd favour for James, like letting one of his goons shoot up her house to create a distraction while he tries to recover and replace a bad batch of pregabalin which had already been dealt out across Belfast and was leading to overdoses.
- Only Sane Woman: Or at least a lot more careful than her ex-husband. She owns a flat that has no paper trail where they're able to hide out after Gerry gets shot and is the voice of reason. Her first interaction with Joseph is to light up inside his caravan, take a long drag and then ask him if she can smoke. From the expression on Joseph's face, he already considers her far more useful than James ever was.
Maurice "Mo" McIntyre
Played By: Michael Shea
- Ain't Too Proud to Beg: When things go wrong and gets a beating laid on him, he begs his father to stop beating him and says he's sorry about Gerry getting shot.
- Big Bad Wannabe: He thinks that his family controls part of the city and sets up a gun deal behind his father's back. But when things fall apart, he finds himself in way over his head.
- His attempt at intimidating JP Junior and his family falls flat when his mother just goes right up to him and intimidates him instead.
- He tries to goad Annie into a fight after he punched her in the face earlier by spitting in her face. All it ends up getting him is a short "The Reason You Suck" Speech from Annie and a punch in the face by his father instead.
- His gun deal blows up in his face when Gerry shows up, Sully shoots him, and then Jen shoots and kills Sully.
- Even Evil Has Standards: He has a major Oh, Crap! when Sully shoots Gerry, a police officer, in broad daylight, and realizes that he and his family just got a huge target put on their backs.
- Greed: What leads to his and his father's downfall.
- Would Hit a Girl: He punches Annie in the face when he realizes that he could get away with it because she didn't turn her body camera on.
Gordon "Gordy" Mackle
Played By: Dane Whyte O'Hara
- My God, What Have I Done?: He has this realisation while talking with Grace in his cell, saying that he never meant for anything like that (The death of Gerry at the hands of Sully) to happen and he never wanted to be in this life in the first place.
Angela Mackle
Played By: Valene Kane
The Ginley Family
Eoin "Sully" O'Sullivan
Played by: Art Campion
- Affably Evil: Shown to be quite friendly and approachable despite being a hardened gangster and willing to shoot a cop in broad daylight.
Fogerty
Played by: Charlie Maher
The Mount Eden Estate
Jim Dixon
Played by: Chris Corrigan
Lee Thompson
Played by: Seamus O'Hara
- The Exile: He's forced to leave Mount Eden for good after Mags reveals to the community that he was behind the petrol bombing of Dixon's house and the murder of Jim Dixon himself.
- He Who Fights Monsters: Despite his initial intentions to restore Mount Eden to what was before, he eventually becomes a brutal loyalist gang leader that uses acts of violence to achieve his goals, exactly like what Dixon and Hamill did before him.
Margaret "Mags" Thompson
Played by: Seána Kerslake
Henry Thompson
Played by: Alfie Lawless
Robert "Rab" McKendry
Played by: Dan Gordon
- Man on Fire: Gets accidentally set on fire by a petrol bomb thrown during the riot, dying from his injuries
- Moral Event Horizon: He tells Henry that he there's no turning back after you take someone else's life. He knows this first-hand because he murdered a Catholic taxi driver during The Troubles.
Family
Cal Ellis
Played By: Matthew Carver
- But Not Too Foreign: It’s suggested that he’s half white/black, the latter being the race of his dad.
- Profiling: He's subject to a racist stop-and-search which leads to him being charged with resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer.
- Put on a Bus: In the second series, he's moved to Manchester for university and isn't seen onscreen.
Civilians
Alan "Happy" Kelly
Played By: Paddy Jenkins
"That's the thing about this place, Jen. Even after all these years, people think the truth is dangerous. Maybe they're right."
- Childhood Friends: He and Gerry were best friends as kids.
- Forgiveness: He forgives Robin Graham for not taking any action to prevent the bomb attack that killed his father and brother.
- Intergenerational Friendship: He and Jen stayed friends after Jen left the police.
- Survivor's Guilt: Happy had wanted to visit the chips shop that was blown up and he blames himself for the loss of his father and brother.
Aodhan McAllister
Played By: Matthew Forsythe
- Amoral Attorney: He helps Gordy Mackle get Off on a Technicality for punching Annie in the face.
