EntertainmentStreamingBlue Lights on iPlayer is the cop show I was really waiting forThis Belfast-based cop show is certainly worth a watchWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
EntertainmentStreamingBlue Lights on iPlayer is the cop show I was really waiting forThis Belfast-based cop show is certainly worth a watchWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
This Belfast-based cop show is certainly worth a watch
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
(Image credit: BBC)
(Image credit: BBC)
The BBC has a bit of a patchy track record when it comes to police dramas. The Aberdeen-set Granite Harbour, which the BBC appears to have spent huge sums promoting if the billboards round my way were any indication, was laughably bad – and my tolerance for bad cop dramas is very high, so to have me turning off in disgust is quite an achievement. But it also made the peerless Happy Valley, one of the best TV shows full stop.
So I’m delighted to say that Blue Lights is much closer to the likes of Happy Valley or Line of Duty than some of its less spectacular shows. I binged all six episodes over the last couple of days and found it warm, gripping and towards the end, absolutely devastating.
What is Blue Lights about?
There’s lots to like about this show. Sian Brooke is wonderful, and you could easily imagine her as a younger version of Catherine Cawood from Happy Valley: not quite so cynical, not yet, but trying to hang on to her humanity and idealism in a job where both are sorely tested.
Grace’s fellow rookie, Annie (Katherine Devlin), comes from a community where the police are not always considered friendly and has to make serious sacrifices to protect her self. And Tommy (Nathan Braniff) seems too nice, too academic, too gentle to make it as a cop, something his charismatic partner Gerry (Richard Dormer, bursting with charm and often very funny) finds endlessly frustrating.
The entire cast is superb, and the writing is very sharp: I think the creators (Adam Patterson and Declan Lawn, who previously made The Salisbury Poisonings) had a lot of fun here. One episode homages the legendary film Rashomon, while throughout the series the writers seem to take great delight setting up expectations and then subverting them, and you’ll have a very different view of the characters at the end of the series than you do in the first few episodes. They feel like real people, not cut-out cops from central casting, and when things get dark – and they get very, very dark – it’s a viscer
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