Based on the books by Benjamin Black, the pseudonym of award-winning Irish writer John Banville, BBC One’s new three-part drama Quirke stars Gabriel Byrne in the title role.

 

Episode 1: ‘Christine Falls’

Sunday 25 May 2014, 9pm

Late autumn in Dublin 1956, and city pathologist Quirke – we never get to know his Christian name – stumbles in late one night from a party in the nurses’ quarters, with a view to sleeping off his hangover in his pathology lab.

To Quirke’s surprise, he finds obstetric consultant Malachy Griffin, his adoptive brother, at his desk completing some paperwork for a recently deceased patient named Christine Falls. Mal is not thrilled to see Quirke, a fact that troubles Quirke when he returns the next morning to find Christine’s body gone.

Consumed by curiosity over what Mal may have been up to, Quirke calls the body back from the morgue and performs a full post mortem. There is little love lost between Quirke and Mal, so Quirke is determined to call his brother to account, and as he closes in on Mal’s secret, he stirs up a hornets’ nest of trouble for himself.

As the trail turns darker and more violent Quirke’s investigations take him to Boston, and to the very heart of his complicated extended family. During his trip, Quirke uncovers the truth about a family secret that has remained buried for nearly 20 years, and begins to understand that there are some truths that may be better left unspoken.

 

Episode 2: ‘Silver Swan’

Sunday 1 June 2014, 9pm

It is early 1957, and the Griffin family has been blown apart since the revelation in Boston that Quirke is Phoebe’s natural father.

Quirke is drinking heavily and Mal and Sarah’s marriage is on the rocks, with Sarah regretting the missed chances of 20 years before when she let her sister Delia steal Quirke from under her nose. Quirke and his adoptive father – the formidable Judge Garret Griffin are estranged – and Phoebe has decided to assert her freedom from the lot of them by moving out of the family home.

Phoebe – young, naïve and vulnerable – pushes Quirke and the family away, defiantly taking up with a louche and dangerous young man called Leslie White. It’s a name that becomes familiar to Quirke as he investigates two apparent suicides, one a well-to-do society woman, the other the wife of his former student Billy Hunt.

All is not as it seems in the deaths of the two women and Quirke and the redoubtable Inspector Hackett are swiftly drawn into a seedy Dublin underworld of drugs and erotica that makes them fear for Phoebe’s safety in her new world.

 

Episode 3: ‘Elegy for April’

Sunday 8 June 2014, 9pm

As his family life unravels Quirke fights a losing battle with grief and drink, while Phoebe forges a new life for herself with the help of a group of oddly assorted friends.

Phoebe’s new circle is Isabel Galloway, the shining light of the Gate Theatre; reporter Jimmy Minor whose crush on Phoebe goes entirely unnoticed by her; junior doctors April Latimer and the exotic Patrick Ojukwu, a Nigerian prince who has discovered that 50s Ireland is an uncomfortable place to be a stranger.

Phoebe is worried that April hasn’t been heard from in over a week. The rest of the gang is not much surprised, sure that she has gone to London to get “the usual trouble” fixed, but Phoebe is not convinced. Lonely herself, and desperate for deeper connections in her life, she turns to Quirke for help, and Quirke, eager to reconnect with his daughter and to keep his own demons at bay, is quick to give it.

With the help of Inspector Hackett of the Gardai, Quirke discovers some alarming evidence in April’s flat, yet when this news is reported to April’s well-connected family, the response is not what he expects. As the Latimers close ranks, Quirke finds himself alone in pursuit of the missing girl and involved in a world where race and class determine who the spotlight shines on, and who is left alone.

 

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