Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Dustin Rowles | TV | September 8, 2025
One of Acorn TV’s biggest hits, the Alicia Silverstone starrer Irish Blood, wrapped its first season this week with an episode that answered the season’s biggest question: Who killed Fiona’s father, Declan. Unfortunately, it muddled most of the remaining mystery while setting up a potential second season (though the series has not officially been picked up, the strong premiere ratings and subscriber sign-ups make it likely).
Fiona Sharpe (Silverstone), a Los Angeles divorce attorney, travels to Ireland after learning her father has been living there since abandoning her at age 10. When she arrives, she discovers that Declan (Jason O’Mara) is dead. His death is ruled a suicide — he jumped from an oceanside cliff — but Fiona suspects foul play. Declan, meanwhile, left behind a briefcase with various clues.
In Ireland, Fiona meets the family she never knew: her doting grandmother Isidora (Dearbhla Molloy), her affectionate aunt Una (Simone Kirby), and her uncle Finn (Stephen Hogan), with whom she grows close while investigating Declan’s death. She teams up with quirky local officer Garda (Ruth Codd), who develops a long-distance crush on Fiona’s L.A. assistant, Tess (Djouliet Amara). Fiona also briefly has a romance with Musa (Leonardo Taiwo), though he ultimately proves largely irrelevant to the ending.
As the investigation unfolds, Fiona is repeatedly threatened and warned to back off. Suspicion centers on Johnny McEntire, a notorious local thug with a history of violence. At one point, Fiona even pins another murder on Johnny, leading to his temporary imprisonment. That victim, Benji, was the son of Bran Donovan, who also happened to be Declan’s business associate. Declan owed Bran a large debt, which Bran collected by taking the cottage he had left to Fiona.
Fiona uncovers clues her father left behind, including a hard drive filled with shady financial records and a record of a Maltese tax haven and a stash of bitcoin. Meanwhile, a family friend, Father Al, threatens Fiona’s mother unless Fiona hands over the hard drive. Turns out that Declan, an accountant, had been cooking the books for Father Al’s charity.
Another clue involves a toy robot called Turbo Clash. When transformed into a car, its door displayed the number 42 — a reference to a local 2017 race in which Car 42 crashed, killing the driver and a six-year-old spectator, Betty Smythe. Johnny McEntire and a hitman, Seamas Kane, were allegedly behind the sabotage. Betty’s father retaliated by burning down McEntire’s house.
It turns out Bran — the man who had praised Fiona for solving his son’s murder — may have been the one who orchestrated the Car 42 sabotage. As Fiona closes in, Bran instructs Johnny to kill her. On her way to visit Seamas Kane in prison, Fiona is attacked by Johnny but saved when Una kills him (Fiona never makes it to see Seamus).
Fiona then discovers another clue hidden in the toy robot: a photo of Una in front of a castle she somehow purchased. This leads to a confrontation in which Una confesses to having been Johnny McEntire’s lover — a wildly out-of-nowhere revelation. Una admits she and McEntire blackmailed Betty Smythe’s father for money, which funded the castle purchase.
A flashback shows Declan confronting Una, urging her to testify against Johnny and Bran, who had murdered the Smythe family. Declan planned to confess his role as their accountant. Una refuses to cooprate and, in a heated moment, she shoved Declan off the cliff, killing her own brother.
So, Una killed Declan to hide her affair with Johnny, who with Bran(?) orchestrated a deadly chain of events involving the Smythes. Una attempts suicide, but Fiona stops her, and she is arrested. In the final scene, Father Al resurfaces in the U.S., menacing Fiona’s mother and demanding more information about Declan’s briefcase.
The finale doesn’t make much sense. The car race subplot is introduced at the last minute, the connections are half-baked, and several plot points contradict earlier episodes. Questions remain: Why would Bran work with the man who killed his son? Why would Betty Smythe’s father pay blackmail for so long instead of going to the police? Why would Johnny McEntire, a career criminal, threaten to rat him out? None of this was set up before the finale.
And why would Father Al, whose crimes are already detailed on the hard drive, still want what’s in the briefcase? It feels like a hastily thrown-together ending designed to duct-tape the season shut while awkwardly forcing a setup for season two. Alicia Silverstone is great in this, and the cast is top-notch, but the writing fails the show at every turn.
