TV Pick of the Week: Blue Lights - review by Yvette Huddleston
Blue Lights BBC iPlayer, review by Yvette Huddleston
The excellent police drama set in Belfast returns for a third series. Scripted by former investigative journalists Adam Patterson and Declan Lawn, who met while working on the BBC current affairs programme Panorama and who both grew up in Northern Ireland, Blue Lights has an absolute authenticity about it that only lived experience can bring.
We catch up again with the new recruits to the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) – the peacetime replacement since 2001 for the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) – as they are now through their probationary period and fully qualified ‘peelers’. Personal relationships have moved on too – with veteran police officer Stevie (Martin McCann) and his mentee Grace (Sian Brooke), a former social worker, now living together. Officers Tommy (Nathan Braniff) and Aisling (Dearbháile McKinney) are also a couple, sharing a flat. “The section’s like a flipping dating shop,” says Stevie to Grace as they sample another of his expertly made cupcakes. Everyone is aware that there is potential for these personal connections to complicate things. Meanwhile Annie (Katherine Devlin) is trying to navigate the security threat around going to visit her dying mother.
At work, however, everyone is professional and focussed and as usual the team have a lot on their plate. A new operator is in town, supplying class A drugs to the wealthy who place their orders via an exclusive phone app. There has been a wave of drug-related crimes as a result of the influx. It may be connected to a private members club run by steely Dana Morgan (Cathy Tyson) that has recently opened that Tommy and his partner Shane (Frank Blake) were called out to when one of the members suffered an overdose.
After two young suspected drugs couriers are arrested and brought in, that station chief Helen (Joanne Crawford) gets a visit from Paul “Colly” Collins (Michael Smiley) a veteran intelligence officer of the organised crime unit. He needs her help with a complex operation that will involve her team but she is not allowed to reveal the details to them. It means Helen has to keep secrets from her colleagues which she hates doing. Stevie is promoted to ‘skipper’ and, despite his misgivings, and a very tough day on the job, he finds that he is actually quite good at it.
Everything about this series is top-class. The writers have created believable, relatable, flawed and human characters and their relationships, both professional and personal, are brilliantly drawn. Moving, funny, powerful stuff.