Critic Reviews

It leaves so many tantalising threads just waiting to unravel. What’s real, and what is a setup? What counts as courage, and what is plain stupidity? By the end of the first episode, I’m engrossed.

By the end, you will have a real fondness for these characters. Blue Lights won’t receive a fraction of the hype of Line of Duty, but there isn’t a duff line or an overcooked scene to be found here. The various storylines knit together into one satisfying conclusion.

The big socio-political themes are there, but never at the expense of the storytelling. If there is anything close to a successor to Happy Valley, it is surely this. It would be a disservice to say that Blue Lights is one of the best police dramas on television. It’s one of the best dramas full stop.

One that skips effortlessly from comedy to breakneck drama, profundity to arguments about cake. When you have writers and a cast who can sustain that tension, you have must-see TV, both effective and affecting.

I’m happy to tell you that the quality remains sky-high for series three. .... The first episode is a scene-setter, and it gets better with every instalment.

Blue Lights definitely wants to be the Belfast equivalent of The Wire. It never quite gets there, but there's also no shame in not living up to one of the greatest TV dramas ever made. At the end of the first season, two of the peelers are offered opportunities to move out of response to more esteemed divisions of the PSNI. Both decline, deciding they can do the most good exactly where they are. When Blue Lights focuses on the simple triumphs and tragedies of what Grace and the others do every day, it's terrific in its own right.

Sincerity and earnestness are potent storytelling tools when deployed correctly, and those qualities were front and centre here. At a time when every police show feels like an action movie on a shoestring, Blue Lights managed to stand out from the crowd.

This is a thoughtful, authentic and emotionally resonant new drama which justifies its existence straight out of the gate, despite my initial personal misgivings. It's just a shame about that title.

This is a complicated, cleverly observed, funny and (at times) horrific drama that is a cut above your average police procedural. Adam Patterson and Declan Lawn's six-parter has a fresh, irreverent quality.

By the time the credits roll, though, any Grace/Stevie shippers have been smacked around the head by a wisely observed reality check about what the pair’s relationship is really based on. In hard times, Blue Lights continues to skip deftly between light and dark.