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DSI Stella Gibson
Played By: Gillian Anderson
Stella Gibson is a Detective Superintendent in London’s Metropolitan Police who arrives in Belfast to conduct a review into a murder case that has not progressed in the month since the investigation started.
She has experience of the kind of high profile and complex case that the Police Service of Northern Ireland are facing, and it is this skillset that ACC Jim Burns believes can be brought to bear.
Her personal life is an enigma, but Gibson is committed to the cause not her loved ones. She is a fighter through and through and anyone not part of the solution is part of the problem.
- Deadpan Snarker: How she takes care of any unwanted reception towards her presence, especially from the natives.
- Defective Detective: Her staunch attitude really rubs other people the wrong way.
- Dude Magnet: Stella is a very attractive woman and most of the men she interacts with in-series have a thing for her.
- Fair Cop: Played by Gillian Anderson no less.
- Fish out of Water: Stella has been away from Belfast for a while.
- Good Is Not Nice: Stella is rather frigid and cold towards others, which alienates many people around her.
- Good Is Not Soft: Stella is very vocal about wanting Paul to rot in a cell and not die getting away with his crimes.
- Hero with Bad Publicity: She's disliked by some of the PSNI because she's an English woman there to review their investigation. There are also local thugs who try to intimidate her while she is at work on the streets.
- Not So Stoic: Most notably when she watches the video file of Rose Stagg's kidnapping.
- What the Hell, Hero?: She's criticized for having an affair with Olson. She snarks back and criticized Jim for doing the same thing prior to the events of the show.
Paul Spector
Played By: Jamie Dornan
Paul Spector is the other side of Stella Gibson’s coin. He is a husband and a father but it is his actions that come to define him. He too seeks to control the world around him, but unlike Gibson he wilfully transgresses the very rules of society that she seeks to enforce.
His family might induce some sort of feelings of love, but it also provides him with the outward appearance of normality. On the surface at least he is socially competent, persuasive and manipulative. By creating a fantasy and putting it into action he believes he creates his own highly controlled existential reality, his personal microcosm.
He works as a bereavement counsellor and in fact his unique lack of empathy makes him a superficially competent one. However, it is the activities that he carries out in the shadows of society that reveal Spector’s true character.
Paul Spector is a serial killer. This is his addiction, and like any addict he needs more of the drug each time to reach a similar high.
- Beard of Evil: It's Perma-Stubble in the first series and an outright creepy beard in the second.
- Big Bad: Of the series.
- Consummate Liar: Part of how he's able to get away with his crimes and successfully fool his wife for so long.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Serial killer he may be, but he genuinely does love his wife and children.
- Even Evil Has Standards: For a serial killer, Spector actually has many standards. In fact, he seems to be a pretty stand-up guy if you put his whole misogynistic serial killer shitck aside...
- In his day job as a grief counselor, he recognizes that one of his patients is a victim of spousal abuse. He goes out of his way to help her (though helping her seemed to be incidental to the fact that he was stalking Annie Brawley and his patient happened to live nearby while he was casing Brawley's home), facing punishment at his job and harassment by the husband's former gang buddies.
- After causing a distracting riot at the psychiatric unit, Spector goes well out of his way to strangle fellow inmate Mark Bailey to death, after hearing that he raped and murdered his 12 year old sister.
- Freudian Excuse: His mother killed herself when he was 7 and he was later sexually abused in an orphanage.
- Faux Affably Evil: A psychopath, but he acts polite enough.
- Fighting Irish: He's Northern Irish and his blatant violence ramps up in the last Season, along with the killings.
- Karma Houdini: Downplayed, he kills himself and doesn't face legal justice for his crimes.
- Lack of Empathy: Paul doesn't seem to have any concept of other people as being people, which makes him ironically excellent as a detached grief counselor.
- Lean and Mean: He keeps himself in wiry, muscular shape.
- Murder-Suicide: At the end of series three, Spector strangles Bailey and then himself, the former act being to hide himself in the man's room where he wouldn't be found right away.
- Near-Death Experience: Spector appears to undergo one after being shot.
- Not So Stoic: Most notably when his children are mentioned.
- Panty Thief: Part of his MO is stealing his victims' underwear as a prelude to killing them.
- Perverted Sniffing: He smells his victim's hair clippings and underwear.
- Serial Killer: Targeting successful women in their thirties.
- The Sociopath: His Lack of Empathy, his ability to lie effortlessly, and his thrill-seeking, i.e. stalking and serial killing, definitely strongly points in this direction.
- The Stoic: Paul almost always has an eerily cold and calculating disposition, even in tense situations.
- Villain Protagonist: Is the series' deuteragonist.
- Villainous Breakdown: He viciously assaults Stella and breaks Anderson's arm after Stella gets under his skin during his last interview.
- Wistful Amnesia: Appears to have lost six years of memories after the events of the season 3 opening. Considering he has no brain injury that could have caused amnesia, evaluations to determine whether he is Faking Amnesia ensue.
- Would Hit a Girl: He assaults Stella after the interview was concluded. This forced the PSNI to immediately detain him for assault.
Sally-Ann Spector
Played By: Bronagh Waugh
Sally Ann is Paul’s wife and mother to their children, Olivia and Liam. She works as a neonatal nurse and whilst she is caring she is also no-nonsense. Capable and mature, Sally Ann looks at her happiest with a baby in her arms.- Driven to Suicide: Due to pressure mounting from the PSNI and partly from the public on lying for Spector after he's outed as a serial killer, she drove herself and the kids to the sea to drown in the SUV. Two bystanders saw this and rushed in to rescue them.
- Horrible Judge of Character: She's never able to pick up on Paul Spector's crimes until the police outright tell her.
Rob Breedlove
Played By: Michael McElhatton
Belfast Chief of Police.- Deadpan Snarker
- Dirty Cop: He's a belfast chief who's involved with a prostitute ring.
- Driven to Suicide: When his brotherhood with James Olson is about to be exposed, he commits suicide while being interrogated.
- Villainous Friendship: With James Olson.
PSNI Patrol Off. Danielle Ferrington
Played By: Nimah McGrady
Dani Ferrington is a PSNI patrol officer. Intuitive and sensitive, Ferrington is also physical and tough. Given the opportunity to shine, Ferrington grabs it with both hands, and so when Gibson invites her into the heart of the investigative unit, Dani is determined to prove her worth.- Action Girl: One of the few PSNI officers who works in the task force to hunt down Spector.
- The Atoner: Works with the task force to hunt down Spector.
- My Greatest Failure: She and her partner were just outside Sarah Kay's house when Spector was attacking her. They didn't notice it until the PSNI dispatch came through and informed all units of a dead body.
Morgan Monroe
Played By: Ian McElhinney
- Corrupt Politician: Influences ACC Burns to make sure the investigation doesn't implicate his son, Aaron. When he later finds out that there's strong evidence against Aaron, he tells Aaron to get away from Belfast.
ACC Jim Burns
Played By: John Lynch
Burns is the Assistant Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland. Policing here is political and Burns is under increasing pressure from the Chairman of the Independent Policing Executive, Morgan Monroe. It was Burns’ idea to bring in Gibson to review the Alice Monroe murder enquiry.- Berserk Button: Hurting or even the possibility of endangering children really sets him off, which is why having indirectly caused Sally Ann Spector attempting Murder-Suicide as a result of him insisting to prosecute her for aiding and abetting hits him particularly hard.
- Butt-Monkey: Everything seems to conspire against him.
- Corrupt Bureaucrat: Strongly downplayed and only for season 1; While he goes along with the corrupt dealings of Chairman of the "Independent" Policing Executive Morgan Monroe and other local high-ranking police officers,going so far as undertaking a few half-hearted attempts to derail Gibson's investigation to his bosses' whims, he's clearly not happy about it and come season 2 strongly regrets not being more assertive against people coercing or manipulating him, overlapping with Beleaguered Bureaucrat.
- Commander Contrarian: Spends an obnoxious amount of his on-screen appearances opposing Gibson's investigation strategy for mostly political or PR reasons (though on a few occasions he seems to genuinely believe doing the right thing), taking often the role of the Obstructive Bureaucrat by default.
- Dirty Old Man: He still has a thing for Stella Gibson despite being a married man.
- Drowning My Sorrows: He realized that he was wrong in trying to implicate Sally Ann for helping Paul in covering up his tracks and thus, started to drink again in the middle of the third series.
- Off the Wagon: In the second series, he breaks 5 years of sobriety and tries to rekindle his affair with Stella because he indirectly warned Aaron Monroe to flee Belfast.
- Real Men Love Jesus: While being a deeply flawed man, he takes his catholic faith pretty seriously though he's often catching himself questioning it due to the state of the world, especially thanks to pedophile priests like Fiachra Jensen.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Didn't want the first few murders to be linked together. He changed his mind after he realizes that there's strong evidence for it and that Monroe is trying to do things behind his back.
James Olson
Played By: Ben Peel
A Detective Sergeant.- Dirty Cop: He's in cahoot's with Rob Breedlove. This isn't explored in much detail in later seasons.
- Pet the Dog: Drops the cop-lawyer rivalry and takes a moment to comfort McSwain when the latter learns of Sarah Kay's murder.
- Police Brutality: Olson forces a suspect to spit out his gum by squeezing his jaw.
- Surprisingly Sudden Death: He's shot multiple times in the back just as he's about to enter his home.
- Villainous Friendship: With Rob Breedlove.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: Killed in the second episode.
Recurring
Ned Callan
Played By: Nick Lee
A Belfast journalist, keen on impressing himself upon Gibson and exposing the failings of the PSNI.- Intrepid Reporter: Believes himself as one, although in reality, his means of getting the latest dirt on the PSNI are downright unethical.
Katrina "Katie" Benedetto
Played By: Aisling Franciosi
A 15 year old girl who babysits Spector's children.- Fille Fatale: Paul's married and uninterested but that doesn't stop her trying to come onto him and tempt him.
- Love Makes You Crazy: Though she come to learn about Paul's crimes, she still tries protect and help him by giving him alibis.
- Smitten Teenage Girl: She has a massive crush on Paul. Paul, however, doesn't reciprocate, though he has no problems with taking advantage of her feelings in a non-sexual way, as he manipulates her into helping him with disrupting the police's investigation.
- Slightly bites her back when a teen accosts her, rightly accusing her of having a sick obsession in the 3rd season.
James Tyler
- Contrived Coincidence: Was not only one of Paul Spector's clients but also happens to be an acquaintance of Immoral Journalist Ned Callan, which gives him the means to track down his wife and later attempting to assassinate Spector.
- Crazy Jealous Guy: Almost immediatedly starts violently obsessing about Spector and assumes that he and his wife must have an affair, just because Spector reported him to social services for Domestic Abuse against his wife.
- Dark and Troubled Past: He tells Paul during a counsellor meeting that he did bad things before he got married. It's implied that he got involved in the sectarian fighting during the Troubles.
- Didn't Think This Through: It obviously never occured to him why it might be a bad idea trying to assassinate Spector in broad daylight while being surrounded by at least a dozen cops.
- Hate Sink: A violent former unionist militant turned low-life gangster who physically abuses his wife and later stalks and assaults her in a women's shelter, while also being generally a smug,needlessly confrontational and not particularly bright asshole, and as if not bad enough, a raging bigot against jews and catholics to boot. Therefore no one was missing him when he was shot dead at the end of season 2.
- Hair-Trigger Temper: It would be easier to count the times when he isn't acting up like a psychotic thug by the slightest provocation, so much so that you would be laughing at his pettiness if he wasn't a highly dangerous, at least six feet tall wife-beating ex-terrorist and gang leader.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: A misogynist antisemite who aside from thinking that Spector must have a thing for his wife just because he's showing her some (superficial) empathy, also immediatedly assumes that Spector must be jewish because of his surname and takes it as just one more reason to dislike and harass him. Also he's, as befitting for a unionist militant, apparently bigoted against Catholics.
- Spanner in the Works: His involvement in shooting Spector derailed the investigation in the 3rd season, giving him amnesia.
- The Fundamentalist: While he doesn't seem to be a particularly devout Protestant, he's apparently fueled enough by his sectarian background to be heavily bigoted against catholics and jews.
- Too Dumb to Live: While it may not be a surprise considering how much of a hotheaded idiot he is, he not only attempts to assassinate Spector in broad daylight while surrounded by a dozen cops but also starts this by shooting one of the Detectives first, getting unsurprisingly immediatedly shot and killed when the others return fire.
August Larson
Played By: Krister Henriksson
- There Are No Therapists: Despite his intentions to help Spector, nothing works in the end since Spector assaults Stella and Tom and severely attacks him before he commits suicide.
Sean Healy
Played By: Eugene O'Hare
- Amoral Attorney: How some in the PSNI see him since he's defending Spector. He doesn't feel fazed after he saw Spector take on Stella and Tom, planning to at least use an insanity plea to get him off serious charges.
Wallace
Played By: Ruth Bradley
- My God, What Have I Done?: After she witnessed Paul assault Stella and Tom in a PSNI interrogation room, she realizes that she can't possibly defend him in court since the public backlash would be strong on why they would defend such a blatantly violent man.
