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.

Blue Lights might settle into being just another standard police procedural. In the meantime, however, it remains the best cop show on British TV.

Yes, it starts slowly, but this long-form storytelling is always worth the investment.

We still love it, but in a way that’s safe and familiar. The affair might soon be over.