It’s 1982 and Glasgow is shocked by the horrific murder of two year old Brian Wilcox. Paddy Meehan, copy boy at the Glasgow Daily News, the city’s largest broadsheet, is fascinated by the story and waits, along with the rest of the city, for the inevitable arrest of a murderer. When ambitious young Paddy finds out that her ten year old cousin has been charged with the crime she faces a stark choice between the two defining elements in her life. On one side her job at the paper and dreams of becoming a journalist; on the other her tight knit Catholic family who want her to stop all this career nonsense and settle down to a quiet life with her fiancée.
The Daily News staff are stunned by the death of a colleague and it quickly becomes clear to Paddy that she is out of her depth. Assisted by handsome journalist, Terry, Paddy closes in on her prime suspect but without concrete proof no one will believe her so she plants evidence on him and informs the police. Suddenly realising she may have implicated the wrong man she confides in the one person at the newspaper she truly trusts, the once brilliant Dr Pete, a journalist of some repute now dying of cancer caused by a lifetime’s hard drinking. But her realisation comes too late.
The award-winning 2011 crime drama returns with another two-part story, set against the backdrop of the 1980s newspaper industry. Journalist Paddy Meehan attends a domestic disturbance involving a well-known human rights lawyer, and sees an opportunity for a scoop when the woman is found murdered the next morning. But her investigation brings conflict to the newsroom and puts both her and her colleagues in grave danger as powerful forces try to hide the truth.
As war breaks out in the newsroom, Paddy's investigation uncovers a dirty tricks campaign against the NUM and a government cover-up. The Glasgow Daily News is in danger, and so are its journalists. Can they stop fighting each other long enough to discover the complex truth?
