Declan Lawn

Cathy Tyson and Michael Smiley join Blue Lights for “most ambitious series yet”

Their characters are yet to be revealed, but the series will be checking back in with the much-loved response officers Grace, Annie and Tommy, two years into their life under blue lights.

Although they successfully de-escalated the loyalist gang violence we saw in series two, and “the old political and criminal order has gone,” a new global gang now rule Belfast.

Behind the respectable veneer of middle-class society lies a morally bankrupt world of accountants and lawyers facilitating organised crime, which brings danger closer to home for the officers than ever before.

The makers of Blue Lights on the light and shade of their Belfast police drama

Martin McCann (Stevie), Siân Brooke (Grace), Katherine Devlin (Annie) and Nathan Braniff (Tommy) sit and stand around a desk in police uniform in a police office

A year after Blue Lights launched to five-star reviews, Belfast’s rookie cops are back out on patrol in Adam Patterson and Declan Lawn’s wonderfully human BBC One drama.

Second time around, the police officers are less green and more frazzled, but still trying to keep the peace in a city flooded with cheap drugs peddled by paramilitary gunmen turned gangsters.