Fans of police procedurals should have plenty to sink their teeth into this month: the third season of the award-winning Blue Lights is back for another outing.
The show, which tells the story of a group of police officers foiling crime in Belfast, won a BAFTA this year for best drama, and writers Declan Lawn and Adam Patterson are hoping to raise the bar still higher with the latest outing.
This season, they’ve said, will include “a lot of trauma, a lot of grief,” with Patterson telling the BBC, “be ready for some laughs and a lot of tears.”
“It's two years in, we know the officers more than ever and so we're really there with them on their journeys,” he added.
But what have their journeys been up until now? Let’s recap.
Season one
At the start of season one, three new police officers join the team at Blackthorn Police station in Belfast: Grace Ellis (Siân Brooke), Annie Conlon (Katherine Devlin) and Tommy Foster (Nathan Braniff).
Over the course of the series, they’re mentored by old hands Stevie Neil (Martin McCann) and Gerry Cliff (Richard Dormer). And there’s certainly a lot to be getting on with – Grace is a single mother, and her son Cal is wrongfully arrested at one point after being racially profiled.
The main storyline concerned the McIntyre family, who control a lot of the drug trafficking around west Belfast.
Led by James McIntyre (John Lynch), they’re a threat to society – but when the team try and take them down, they find out something rather unpleasant. You see, James is actually an MI5 informant, and under their protection.
Things culminate in a devastating moment where police officer Gerry gets caught in the crossfire of a McIntyre drug deal gone wrong.
With a target on his back, James reveals to his son that he is an informant for MI5. The secret service have offered him protection and a new identity for him and one other person – and James chooses to take Mo, his son, rather than his wife Tina.
However, Grace manages to find evidence linking James to the crime – thanks to a stolen memory card – and the police squad arrest both of them before they escape to their new lives. Tina, meanwhile, ends the series meeting with the MI5 handler, suggesting she might be taking over her husband’s role as an informer.
Season two
Unfortunately for the Blackthorn police team, season two began in chaos. A year since the events of season one, several gangs are competing to fill the void left by the McIntyre family.
One of them is Lee Thompson (Seamus O’Hara), who we meet at the Mount Eden Estate. Lee is a former soldier and Protestant from east Belfast who starts the show “feeling exploited by the gangs who ran the estate, as well as the people who have let it happen.”
In the absence of the McIntyres, he steps in to take over the drug running, thinking he has better morals and intentions than many of his competitors.
But obviously, things go south quickly: Lee quickly orders a hit on rival gangster Jim ‘Dixie’ Dixon (Chris Corrigan), who ends up being shot, and his house petrol bombed.
As the series continues, Lee becomes something of a Godfather-esque figure: telling residents he’ll get rid of the scourge of drugs on the streets, while at the same time dealing in them. To make things worse, DS Canning (Desmond Eastwood) has a lot on his plate. After being tasked with investigating the drug problem in the city centre, he seems to have entered into a pact with Lee, to try and keep the crime rates down.
Tensions with the police also ramp up. Lee’s young nephew Henry (the son of his sister Mags, played by Seána Kerslake) fires a gun through the window of officers Stevie and Grace.
They both survive (phew) but the footage is caught on camera. After a bit of deep-fake editing from Lee, though, the video is edited to make it look like Henry was being threatened by a squad of armed police and only had a toy gun in his hand.
As this is all going down, Grace and Jonty take Mags for a talk and suggest that her son has been radicalised by her uncle – and that he’s not the first one.
The scars of the Troubles stretch back years, and we later find out that the siblings’ uncle Rab (Dan Gordon) has been carrying burdens of his own. Back in the day, he was sent to prison for luring a Catholic taxi driver down to the docks and killing him.
“His name was Francis. He was crying, he said he had two wee girls,” he tells Henry in a bid to reach out to him. “You cross over a bridge and the bridge crumbles behind you and you can never go back,” he adds. “The world is dark forever.” Shaken, Henry finally opens up to Rab about what happened on the day of the shooting.
What happens in the finale?
By the time the ending rolls around, the community has fallen for Lee’s faked footage of the shooting. With tensions sky-high, there ends up being a riot. Meanwhile, the police are still trying to find a bit of forensic evidence to tie former soldier Craig McQuarrie (the killer) to the crime.
With police trying to deal with the riots, as well as track down a scarf McQuarrie was wearing the night of the murder, Lee and Mags’ uncle Rab (Dan Gordon) rushes into the street to beg the locals to simmer down.
Tragically, Rab gets hit with a petrol bomb and dies. But the police manage to find the scarf, and arrest McQuarrie, who takes full responsibility for the murder of Jim Dixon. “You don’t know the meaning of the word loyalty,” he tells McNally.
Lee seemingly walks away scot-free, but soon finds out that his community blames him for the death of Jim, and he’s been ostracised.
The series ends with DS Canning landing in hot water for going for a secret meeting with Lee the day that Henry got hold of the gun he used to nearly shoot the police officers. Will the fallout continue in season three?
Also Grace and Stevie (possibly) make good on their will they-won’t they romance in the finale’s closing scenes. Hooray!
Blue Lights season three starts on BBC One from 9pm
