Blue Lights is an original police drama from Northern Irish writing duo Adam Patterson and Declan Lawn (The Salisbury Poisonings). The six-part series was produced by Two Cities Television with support from Northern Ireland Screen, and filmed on location in Northern Ireland.
Blue Lights is the story of probationary police officers working in contemporary Belfast, a city in which being a frontline response cop comes with a unique set of pressures and dangers. Grace (Siân Brooke), a mother of a teenage boy, has made the decision in her 40’s to leave her steady job as a social worker to join the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI). Having previously worked in social care she straddles a fine line between the personal and professional. It’s the biggest gamble of her life, and just a few weeks into the job, she’s making so many mistakes that her decision no longer looks like a winning bet.
Her fellow rookies are Annie (Katherine Devlin), who struggles with the fact that her chosen path may mean having to leave everything she’s ever known behind, and Tommy (Nathan Braniff), who is desperate to prove himself, despite being disastrously inept at the practical side of frontline response policing.
Lawn described the writing duo as part of “the last transitional generation” to witness the Troubles in Northern Ireland, while speaking to The Guardian: “When I was a boy I would genuinely be worried about whether my parents would come home from work each day. Children were conscious of the constant risk.”
“The drama is born from everything we’ve seen people do when they respond to terrible situations,” Patterson added, speaking on the show’s authenticity. “I grew up in a small town outside Belfast, and my father was a prison officer, so we had a gun in the home and bullet-proof windows. That was normal life for me, and it has all spilled out into this series, including the humour that got people through it all.”
Blue Lights is directed by Gilles Bannier (Trigger Point, Tin Star, Spiral) and executive produced by Tommy Bulfin (BBC), Stephen Wright (Two Cities Television), Louise Gallagher (Gallagher Films), and Declan Lawn & Adam Patterson. Two Cities is part of the STV Studios group of production labels. The series was commissioned as part of the BBC and Northern Ireland Screen partnership agreement.
Blue Lights will premiere on BBC One Northern Ireland on March 27th at 9pm.