New BBC drama Blue Lights explores the unique challenges faced by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) by following three rookie police officers in their probation period.
The motto of the new six-part series, created by Adam Patterson and Declan Lawn, is: “The good people are not always good and the bad are not always bad because that’s real life. And that’s Blue Lights.”
About the series, Lawn said: “As a writer, the dream is to interrogate and talk about your own place.
“And we had a lot to say about our own place.”
The aim was to show the extraordinarily complex place Northern Ireland is, he added.
On their decision to explore the PSNI specifically, Mr Patterson said the police station was the perfect place to look at Belfast.
“Police officers literally go to every part of the city, they respond to all of the variants of people that live here,” he said.
“So it just felt like the right mechanism to approach a topic about our home.”
Sian Brooke, who plays Grace Ellis, said her preparation for the role was “fascinating”.
Grace Ellis is a character who has made the decision in her 40s to leave her steady job as a social worker to join the PSNI.
“[The cast] had an evening where we joined a patrol car, seeing the backstage side of policing and that actually it’s not all that, some of it can be hanging about in a car for long periods,” Sian Brooke said.
Martin McCann, who plays Stevie Neil in the drama, discussed the appeal of the show’s portrayal of the complications and connotations that go along with being a police officer in Northern Ireland.
“Young people join the police force and do they really know what they’re signing up for and can they handle it? Is it too much? Is it dangerous? These elements are explored, and that does make it quite unique,” he said.
While the show centres around police officers, Mr Lawn said the show was a universal story.
“Anyone who’s ever started a new job or done anything completely new where the stakes are kind of high, will recognise what these three people are going through.”
Blue Lights premieres on BBC One on Monday 27 March at 21:00 BST, with the full series available on BBC iPlayer.
(Source: BBC)
