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The recreation room, the briefing room, the offices, the interview room – they’re all located within these halls. “The set makes our job so much easier because we don’t have to imagine anything. The police cars are literally parked outside,” says Nathan Braniff, who plays Constable Tommy Foster. “It’s basically like a real police station.”
He’s not wrong – it very much feels that way. On a pinboard in the recreation room, which has dartboards, a TV and DVDs, there are polaroids of the cast in character and handwritten cards addressed to the officers. There are even padlocks on the fridges because, during their research, the production designers noticed this quirk in real police stations… the officers don’t want anyone stealing their food.
“Once you slip on the uniform and walk on to the set, you’re back at it… people have thought I was a cop. It’s easier to just play along than explain,” says Frank Blake, who stars as unpredictable police officer Shane Bradley.
“The [bulletproof] vests don’t get any easier,” adds Katherine Devlin, referring to the heavy uniform she wears as Annie Conlon. “There are so many props to think about… We hate to see our continuity script adviser coming. He’ll be like, ‘Your earpiece wasn’t in.’”
The attention to detail is impeccable, which comes as no surprise. It’s written by Northern Irish screenwriters Declan Lawn and Adam Patterson, former journalists for Panorama and BBC Northern Ireland’s Spotlight. They spend about three months researching a new series, speaking to around 25 police officers for each one, as well as lawyers, victims of crime and business owners in Belfast.
“Officers would tell us about their experiences and frequently they would end up crying. We felt a bit like impostors, like we were unqualified therapists,” says Lawn. “Many of them had never had any therapy or counselling. They just got on with it. There’s so much undiagnosed and hidden trauma in the police force. That really comes through in this series.”
In the hall, I notice a prominent memorial to Constable Gerry Cliff (played by Richard Dormer), who died in action in series one, as well as a plaque dedicated to “Our Murdered Colleagues”. Cliff is still very much part of the storyline in the new series that starts this Monday.
Michael Smiley joins the cast as Paul “Colly” Collins, an intelligence officer who worked with Cliff and is now seeking justice, and possibly revenge, for his murder.
“My dad died when I was 32,” says Lawn, who’s now 48. “The idea that someone dies and their colleagues and friends forget them is preposterous. These people, in some ways, still walk among us as psychological ghosts.
People ask whether Stevie and Grace have got it on
“It’s also a metaphor for all the loss we’ve endured in Northern Ireland. You couldn’t write a realistic show about Northern Ireland without incorporating the idea of loss, grief and violent death. It’s so integral to who we are. So many people died here, and so many others were maimed or horrifically injured, and we’re still living with all of that.”
Lawn also met three police couples, with one pair working in the same station, for realistic relationship material for police officer Stevie Neill (Martin McCann) and social worker turned “peeler” Grace Ellis (Siân Brooke), who finally kissed at the end of series two.
Lawn says, “Will-they, won’t-they storylines work in television, but I think sometimes they can be overexploited by writers to keep an audience interested. At some point, they deserve to see that kiss, or those people admitting they love each other. The fear is: it’s done – what happens then? Do you talk about the job when you get home? Do you ever disagree about how to do the job?”
“One of the more upfront questions people ask about Grace and Stevie is whether they’ve got it on,” actor McCann laughs. “But it’s quite a grown-up, realistic, not very Hollywood approach to a workplace romance.”
“This series, you see them navigating this crazy profession together, and how their old lives impact where they are now,” adds Brooke.
Series one took place in a republican community in west Belfast; series two in a loyalist community in east Belfast; and now series three is set in “the leafy, salubrious suburbs of south Belfast, where I live,” Lawn explains. “I’m talking about my neighbours in this series. I’ve always thought, ‘This is where the real criminals live.’ It probably means I’ll have to move house at the end of it, but that’s fine. I’ll take that on the chin.
“Crime doesn’t have any class boundaries. When people think of this city, they think of troubled working-class communities still divided by sectarianism. That’s true, and we have shown that, but when I go out with the police in the back of their car, they’re only spending a portion of their time in working-class estates. They’re often going to really bad incidents in lovely big houses. White-collar crime is even more dangerous than regular crime out on the streets.”
I also visit the set of the sumptuous private members’ club The Deanery, which is actually right next to the set for Blackthorn Station. There’s a giant gold and teal octopus on the wall, peacock wallpaper and loads of funky art and fancy lamps. It’s owned by career criminal Dana Morgan (Cathy Tyson, joining the cast in this third series), who is celebrating the club’s first anniversary with wealthy guests.
“I haven’t played a character like this ever,” Tyson reveals. “She is at the top of an illegal trade and has a double life. She’s very intelligent and a sociopath – I did a bit of homework on that!”
Lawn and Patterson spend hours discussing the cast’s characters with them so “they have a stake in who this person is”, even with actors who only film for a few days. “Blue Lights is fundamentally and primarily a character drama,” says Lawn. “Everything about the criminal arcs is secondary to those characters. They all encounter things in the job that make every one of them question: ‘Is this really worth it?’ We get the answer in episode six.”
They’re already discussing series four, which was commissioned before series two even came out. More than 87 per cent of the Blue Lights crew were from Northern Ireland and the series generated about £20 million for the Northern Ireland economy, according to a 2023/24 BBC Economic Impact Report for Northern Ireland. When Lawn accepted the Bafta, he said, “Belfast, this one’s for you.”
McCann says, “I’m from west Belfast, so a career in the police service just didn’t seem like an option. For the first time, I think people in Northern Ireland are getting to see a drama that represents the people beneath the uniform that take the risk to do this job. It really is changing the perception of what the Police Service of Northern Ireland is.”
“There was a producer in New York who said to me last year, ‘You guys in Belfast are having a real moment.’ I said, ‘Yeah, but it’s going to last for
30 years,’” Lawn laughs. “That’s the plan – that it never dissipates or fades, that we just keep going.”