There are plenty of good police dramas on British telly — but none of them are quite like Blue Lights. The gripping, addictive Northern Irish drama first hit our screens in 2023 and its second season has just taken home the BAFTA for Best Drama.
It's easy to see why this police show stands out from the crowd. Set in Northern Ireland, the show sees a group of rookie cops tackling an increasingly unstable society all while discovering the deep-rooted corruption in the force. But while the show dives deep into some very real, very timely social issues, all the while, it maintains that juicy, soapy veneer that we can't help but love.
Here's everything you need to know about the BAFTA-winning show that is bound to be your next binge.
The gripping, twisty thriller came to a shocking end.
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The show focuses on three new cops in Belfast encountering the challenges of modern policing in the UK for the first time. There's Grace, a 40-something-year-old who has made a pivot to policing, Annie, a new cop from a Catholic upbringing, and Tommy, a timid new cop on the force. And, yes, the challenges they face include both the crime on the streets and the bosses in charge.
Blue Lights features a number of familiar faces for fans of UK television.
Siân Brooke (Sherlock, The Moorside) stars as newbie cop Grace Ellis. Katherine Devlin (The Dig) is another star as Annie Conlon. Nathan Braniff plays Thomas Foster.
Other familiar faces include Richard Dormer (Gangs of London), Martin McCann (Calibre), John Lynch (The Secret Garden) and Michael Shea.
“It’s a stalker story turned on its head. It takes a trope and turns it on its head.”
You can catch up on season 1 and 2 of Blue Lights right now on BBC iPlayer.
Good news — once you've binged your way through the first two seasons of Blue Lights, you can look forward to another instalment. In fact, the cast are almost finished filming.
"[It’s] intense, surprising... we're just coming to the end of it, so we're about to enter our last week of filming," Brooke said to Radio Times on the BAFTAs red carpet.
She added, “The writing I think on this one, it just blows it out the water – I don't know how these guys get better and better, but they do… There's a lot of care that's gone into making [these characters] and they're very individual and so people have related to them, they want to know what happens, where the story ends."
The third season is expected to land in late 2025 or early 2026.
It's about “the strength and passion of motherhood…”
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