Blue Lights, Declan Lawn and Adam Patterson’s Belfast-set drama about police trainees, was one of the BBC’s breakthrough hits of 2023. Well observed, authentically performed, with the Troubles still swirling in the mists, it ended on a juddering note of tragedy.
Series two is set a year on. Jen (Hannah McClean) is retraining as a solicitor (and exploring a certain historical bombing case). There’s an ambitious (potentially slippery?) new officer (Frank Blake). And of course there are our regular “peelers”, played by, among others, Siân Brooke, Martin McCann, Nathan Braniff and Katherine Devlin.
As before, they switch on the lights and the sirens, bicker about snacks and shrug on protective clothing. It’s business as usual (robberies, disturbances, turf battles), until it isn’t, with segues into assisted death, and a charismatic former army man (Seamus O’Hara) leading a loyalist criminal gang with messianic zeal.
Blue Lights thrives at the delicate junction between harsher-than-harsh reality and soft humanity, but with the overriding credo that life comes at you fast: one moment there’s love, attraction, friendly advice (“You need a ride”); the next, it’s all blood, fire, chauvinism (“You need to put a muzzle on that”) and bullets through the patrol car back window. While inevitably this second outing doesn’t feel quite so unexpected, Blue Lights continues to be big, brutal and vivid.
コメント