Featuring a top-notch cast and cracking straight-from-life scripts written by two former Belfast journalists, each episode of "Blue Lights" blazes to life in genuinely binge-worthy TV.
Declan Lawn and Adam Patterson are the former journalists (now screenwriters) behind the hit show, "Blue Lights", which has just started its second season on Britbox, Amazon Prime and The Roku Channel in the United States, having aired first in March in UK and Ireland.
“We started out as journalists,” Lawn tells IrishCentral.
“I was with the BBC for 16 years and Adam was there as well, we're from Northern Ireland, we grew up there. There was an extensive research process for this show involving talking to dozens of current and former police officers. Authenticity was an is a really important aspect for us.”
Lawn continues: “We really needed what's onscreen to resonate with the people at home. That was our barometer. And in particular, we really want the police at home to look at it and think, yeah, that's pretty close to reality.
“The research kind of began when we were born,” explains Patterson, “because we've lived the life there and seen that transition from conflict to peacetime. So we're aware of the political nuances and doing a a police show allowed us to touch some of those societal issues.”
"Blue Lights" is a distillation of everything they've ever thought about their home, Patterson continues. Including all the things they came across in journalism and all the things they came across in life, funneled into a gripping police procedural.
Another key theme the show taps into is generational trauma. In this case the legacy of The Troubles, but in a way that's so human and resonant that it could be anywhere in the world. Blue Lights deeply explores the way trauma gets inherited and passed on.
“The idea of trans-generational trauma and the ghosts of the past is totally central to the show,” says Lawn.
“Because we feel that it's really central to where Northern Ireland is today. You know, that trauma exists. It exists in ways that are conscious and unconscious, it kind of runs right through society.”
"Blue Lights" looks at a post-conflict society and what that conflict has done to people. And I would just add that we've seen the dangers of people not being able to speak out in society for too long, I think Northern Ireland's been a place for people who've been scared to speak.”
Season One of "Blue Lights" followed three Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) rookies Grace Ellis (Siân Brooke), Tommy Foster (Nathan Braniff) and Annie Conlon (Katherine Devlin) as they try to sink not swim in their new roles.
“In series two we join our officers exactly a year after the events of series one,” says Lawn, “and now they’re facing a whole new set of professional and personal challenges. We’re very excited indeed about bringing you this next chapter of the 'Blue Lights' story!"
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