Blue Lights (RTÉ One, Tuesday, 10.15pm) comes to RTÉ six months after its UK debut, yet its arrival nonetheless feels like the gentlest spritz of fresh air. It’s a cop show set in Belfast that manages to be not entirely about the Troubles. Alongside the traditional misery and tension, it squeezes in humour and humanity. It has its cake while letting the cake off with a caution.
Irish police dramas tend to suffer because of the deeply idiosyncratic nature of our law enforcement. South of the border, dramatists seem unable to see gardaí as anything other than jumped-up boys from the bogs. The nadir of that perspective, of course, being John Michael McDonagh’s 2011 toe-curler The Guard, in which – let’s all just take a moment to sigh – Dubliner Brendan Gleeson was parachuted in as the “country” cop. We were so desperate for attention that we all pretended to like it – but who even thinks about it nowadays?
Up north, there is the “Troubles” factor. This decrees all police procedurals must be grim beyond reckoning. And that they will feature at least 20 minutes of urchins chucking petrol bombs at Land Rover Tangis. Blue Lights swerves these pitfalls – no doubt because its writers, Declan Lawn and Adam Patterson, are from the North. They have no interest in regurgitating copper-bottomed cliches.
Their script smartly focuses not on the conflict but on those policing the frontline. Siân Brooke is Grace, a social worker who joined the PSNI because she wants to do her bit for society. It’s a motivation which earns her a gentle ribbing (though not outright disdain) from her flinty patrol partner Stevie (Martin McCann).
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Yet while the show is initially presented as a vehicle for Brooke – last seen as a Targaryen royal suffering a gory early death in Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon – the action quickly expands out outwards. There is, for instance, a scene-stealing part for Richard Dormer as jaundiced Gerry, mentoring the “fast track” (ie swotty and green) probationer Tommy (Nathan Braniff).
Blue Lights doesn’t avoid the tensions between the police and republican communities. When Grace tries to help a vulnerable mother, a gang of kids gathers, and she is labelled a “wee brave peeler”. Violence breaks out soon afterwards and John Lynch turns up as a republican godfather.
But by now Blue Lights has won our trust. It acknowledges the faultlines running through post-Troubles Northern Ireland. Yet it has broader things to say about policing, community and the wisdom or foolishness of trying to be an agent of change in the world.
