The BBC’s best drama is back. Blue Lights, which follows rookie police officers in Northern Ireland, was a stealth hit in 2023, followed by a Bafta-winning second series in 2024. And I’m happy to tell you that the quality remains sky-high for series three.
There are gripping set pieces – anyone still traumatised by the death of wonderful Gerry in the first instalment will have their heart in their mouth here over the fate of another major character – but it’s the bond between the officers that gives Blue Lights its heart. Annie (Katherine Devlin) compares it to playing Gaelic football for club and county: your county teammates will go to your funeral. Your clubmates will carry your coffin. These are clubmates.
Writers Declan Lawn and Adam Patterson pull on threads from previous series, immersing us in the world of organised crime and cocaine dealing, but their focus this time is as much on the buyers as the sellers.
Shane (Frank Blake) rails against the “nice, respectable, middle-class people who go to dinner parties, they drink some wine and do a few wee lines and think what they do doesn’t really count”. This is not an original idea, of course, but it gives the show somewhere new to go. A swanky private members’ club run by Dana Morgan (Cathy Tyson) attracts the city’s monied, middle-aged professionals, but an accidental overdose by one of the patrons also attracts the attention of the PSNI.
