When Radio Times is invited to visit the set of Blue Lights in Belfast, series two has just won a Bafta for best drama and the cast and crew are understandably in high spirits while filming the third. The award is even proudly on show today at Netherleigh House – the former headquarters of the Department for the Economy, which acts as the fictional Blackthorn Station in modern Belfast.
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.
View Green Video on the source website“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.’”
“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.”
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.
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.
“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.”
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 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!”
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.”
“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 for30 years,’” Lawn laughs. “That’s the plan – that it never dissipates or fades, that we just keep going.”
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