Blue Lights review, BBC crime drama

Sian Brooke as Grace Ellis in Blue Lights

(Image credit: BBC)

published 5 April 2023

I wouldn’t blame anyone who felt they had seen more than enough cop dramas on British TV, said Anita Singh in The Daily Telegraph – but the BBC’s latest six-part thriller is a cracker. Written by Declan Lawn and Adam Patterson, who brought us The Salisbury Poisonings, Blue Lights doesn’t have “a duff line or an overcooked scene”.

The drama centres on three rookie constables in Belfast negotiating their more experienced colleagues on one side, the city’s criminals on the other, and dodgy intelligence officers in between. There are shocking incidents involving sectarian and drugs violence, but it isn’t relentlessly dark or political.

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The premise, of three greenhorns thrown into a fraught and dangerous environment, almost guarantees excitement, said Rebecca Nicholson in The Guardian. Unlike their experienced colleagues, the rookies don’t know which battles are not worth fighting – particularly Grace (Sian Brooke), an idealistic ex-social worker. Meanwhile, the earnest Tommy (Nathan Braniff) struggles to project authority, and the hard-partying Annie (Katherine Devlin) has to lie to her friends about her job. There are many tantalising threads: “What’s real, and what is a setup? What counts as courage, and what is plain stupidity?” It’s well-crafted, and often thrilling.

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