You know a whodunnit is good when you can spend four solid hours watching and feel like only 20 minutes have passed. Dublin Murders – the chilling detective drama that’s currently storming the Netflix charts - is exactly that kind of series: a whodunnit that’ll surprise you, hook you and, in its final moments, make you realise you’ve got the whole thing totally wrong!
An adaptation of Tana French’s bestselling Dublin Murder Squad novels, we meet our lead detectives Rob Reilly (Killian Scott) and Cassie Maddox (Sarah Greene) tired, battered and broken. “We won’t see each other again”, Cassie tells Rob in the opening scenes. But what exactly has brought them to this point? As the story rewinds to four months earlier, when the pair have two nasty murder cases on their hands, it quickly becomes clear that we’re about to find out.
With all eight episodes now available to binge, here’s everything you need to know about Dublin Murders before tuning in, including the plot details, cast, trailer and why it’s 5-star viewing.
What is Dublin Murders about?
The eight-part series, which first aired on the BBC in 2019, has been adapted from Tana French’s internationally bestselling Dublin Murder Squad novels. The woman to adapt them is Sarah Phelps, who you might know as the genius behind the BBC’s Agatha Christie adaptations, And Then There Were None and The Witness for the Prosecution.
Set during the height of the Celtic Tiger financial boom of the millennium, at the centre of the series are lead Detectives Rob Reilly (Killian Scott) and Cassie Maddox (Sarah Greene), who have two murder investigations on their hands that are seemingly unrelated, but we’ll soon discover that they have more in common that first anticipated – and every tiny detail matters.
The first victim is young talented ballerina, Katy Devlin, who’s found dead on an ancient stone altar. The murder location is near the site of a 1980s disappearance, where three young children went missing and only one returned with no memory and covered in blood. No spoilers, but the chilling events reopen old - and very painful - wounds for Detective Reilly.
The second victim is Lexie Madison, a vivacious free-spirited woman, who’s found stabbed in a roofless famine cottage. Lexie looks exactly like Cassie and she’s been living under an alias, Lexie Mangan, that Cassie once used. In order to uncover the truth, Cassie embarks on a dangerous undercover operation, posing as the dead woman to infiltrate her former life and friends.
It’s a creepy series that raises more questions by the episode before a truly jaw-dropping finale. “Cassie and Rob are the keepers of each other’s secrets and that kind of catches up with them”, Sarah Green explained at a screening of the series.
Discussing how Dublin Murders differs from other detective dramas, Killian Scott told the BBC: “The primary characters are both fractured and broken individuals, who are managing to keep all of that at bay by being rigorously focused on their professional life - but the mask, with all of these layers underneath, is beginning to crack.
“I found that complexity interesting. There’s also a quality of the supernatural that runs through the show - it doesn't shy away from the darker recesses of the human mind and the scripts are very authentically convincing. There are elements of the storyline that are inevitably slightly heightened, but the scripts were still rooted in believable individuals and believable circumstances.”
Who’s in the cast of Dublin Murders?
The cast of Dublin Murders includes:
- Killian Scott (Strike) as Detective Rob Reilly
- Sarah Greene (Penny Dreadful) as Detective Cassie Maddox
- Tom Vaughan-Lawlor (Love/Hate) as Frank Mackey
- Moe Dunford (The Dig) as Detective Sam O’Neill
- Leah McNamara (Cherry Tree) as Rosalind Devlin
- Ian Kenny (Sing Street) as Garda Phelan
- Eugene O’Hare (Marcella) as Detective Quigley
- Jonny Holden (War of the Worlds) as Damien Donnelly
- Conleth Hill (Magpie Murders) as Superintendent O’Kelly
- Peter McDonald (The Stag) as Jonathan Devlin
Is there a trailer for Dublin Murders?
Yes, you can watch the trailer for Dublin Murders below.
Is Dublin Murders any good?
Yes, Dublin Murders is a fantastic series owed largely to the fact that the source material is pretty special. Where other detective dramas feature the same old clichés, which means you’ve worked out what’s going on by episode two, Dublin Murders is so brilliantly written (and twisty) that the guessing game continues right up until the final episode. We’re not surprised it’s currently soaring up the Netflix charts.
How can I watch Dublin Murders?
Dublin Murders is available to watch now on Netflix. You can also watch all eight episodes on BBC iPlayer.
What other detective dramas can I watch now?
Ahead of its return this week (on Sunday 29th March), we’d highly recommend catching up on Grace. John Simm leads the cast as Detective Superintendent Roy Grace, a tenacious, Brighton-based detective haunted by the disappearance of his wife, Sandy. Series 1-5 are available to watch now on ITVX. We’d also suggest getting stuck into Channel 5’s hidden-gem series Dalgliesh. The drama takes us back to 1970s England where DCI Adam Dalgliesh (played by Bertie Carvel) solves murders in quite possibly the most empathetic fashion any on-screen detective ever has. Dalgliesh is available to watch on Channel 5 and Acorn TV via Prime Video. For more great detective dramas, check out our pick of the very best here.
