The authentic, well-researched cop show returns to Belfast with a Bafta under its belt
One of the most endlessly asked television-related questions must be: Will there be another series of Line of Duty? The answer would seem to be yes (2027, it’s rumoured), but frankly that doesn’t matter when we have the altogether more interesting and realistic Blue Lights. The Belfast-based police procedural returns with a deserved Bafta and to the tune of Ewan MacColl’s “Dirty Old Town” (written about 1940s Salford, but never mind; it works just as well for this version of Belfast).
Unlike Line of Duty, which is seemingly set in an indeterminate Midlands city, the specific location is central to Blue Lights. Where the first series revolved around a former IRA man now heading a crime family in Catholic, nationalist West Belfast, the focus of the second series was a loyalist pub in Protestant East Belfast. The action now shifts to affluent South Belfast, where a Dublin-based crime gang is attempting to dominate the city’s drugs trade.
Central to their plan is a private members’ club run by a steely boss played by Cathy Tyson. A members-only encrypted app offers 90 per cent pure cocaine to Belfast’s business and professional elite – not to make money but to buy influence. This gets off to a bad start, however, when one of the members snorts rather too much and has a heart attack.
That’s after one of the gang’s young street runners, Sandy McKnight (Jack McBride-Marshall), is picked up by Grace and Stevie (Siân Brooke and Martin McCann) – only for Organised Crime to step in and take over the case.
Grace and Stevie’s relationship is meanwhile shifting up a gear, with talk of buying a house together in the country. And they are not the only lovers at fictional Blackthorn Police Station: Tommy and Aisling (Nathan Braniff and Dearbháile McKinney) are also part of a section that boss Helen (Joanne Crawford) calls “a flipping dating show”. Perhaps this a note from the writers to themselves – they might be over-doing the cosy in-house romances.
The last of the regular cast of “peelers”, Annie (Katherine Devlin), is having to make visits home to Catholic West Belfast to visit her sick mother. Previous series have underlined her anxieties about joining the traditionally Protestant-dominated Police Service of Northern Ireland and the threats that might arise from her own community.
Meanwhile, a welcome new addition is an intelligence officer called Paul “Colly” Collins. Comic actor Michael Smiley (Bad Sisters) brings the dishevelled, deceptively laid-back air of Slow Horses’ Jackson Lamb to the role. Colly manages to persuade young Sandy to turn informer before the unfortunate lad is lured onto a rooftop by a drug gang enforcer and thrown to his death.
Co-creators and writers Declan Lawn and Adam Patterson not only grew up in Northern Ireland and live in Belfast, they also share an impressive journalistic background, having worked together on Panorama.
The authenticity of Blue Lights ranges from their deep knowledge of policing and sectarian politics in post-Good Friday Agreement Northern Ireland to amusing little details. When Aisling brings a bottle of tonic wine – drink of choice for a certain sub-section of antisocial teens – to a station party, for example, Shane (Frank Blake) dubs the caffeinated alcoholic beverage “Lurgan champagne”.
Another series has already been commissioned and there is a slight danger that once all the more distinctive characteristics of policing in Northern Ireland have been covered, Blue Lights might settle into being just another standard police procedural. In the meantime, however, it remains the best cop show on British TV.
‘Blue Lights’ continues next Monday at 9pm on BBC One. The full series is streaming on BBC iPlayer
