‘Blue Lights’ Stars Preview ‘Fearless’ Season 3

White knuckling it at the wheel of a police car during a chase, the usually calm Constable Grace Ellis (Siân Brooke) of the Northern Ireland Police Force cries into her radio to the command center, “Tell me what to do!” Turning right or left at the next corner could mean life or death.

It’s one of the heart-pounding Season 3 scenes TV Insider observed in production on the Belfast set of BritBox’s critically acclaimed Blue Lights, a great and gritty police drama in the vein of The Wire that’s already been renewed for a fourth season. The day before our visit, it won a BAFTA, the British equivalent of an Emmy, for Best Drama series.

“Grace is a character that puts herself in the line of fire. She’s not afraid, does the unexpected, and doesn’t always tow the party line. She can’t help but stand up for the right thing,” Brooke told us later in the unglamorous storeroom of a pub, one of the many real-life locations all over Belfast that the series uses instead of soundstages. That’s not the only way Blue Lights keeps things authentic. Much of the story is in the cast’s bones. Brooke continued, “My dad was a police officer. I’d grown up not seeing that border between a civilian and a police officer. I saw that there was a person like my dad underneath that uniform. Reading the script, I was like, ‘Oh God.’ I think that’s why people enjoy the show so much. It shows the human side of what it is to do this job.”

BritBox

That side of policing was well known to the series creators, former TV journalists Declan Lawn and Adam Patterson. (It’s notable that The Wire was the brainchild of onetime Baltimore Sun crime reporter David Simon.) The pair were on the ground covering a 2013 four-day riot in Belfast, fueled by petrol bombs, bricks, and the longstanding animosity between Irish republican/nationalist Catholics and British loyalist/unionist Protestants. That clash, known as the Troubles, officially ended with the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, but today’s criminal gangs rose from the ashes. An inspired Lawn recalled, “We thought, ‘Is there a more emotional way to tell this story?'”

Ten years later, the gripping series premiered with three probationary recruits trying to make the cut in a city where the personal and political are forever intertwined. Grace, an English 40-something single mom to a teen boy, was wisest in the ways of the streets thanks to her previous job as a social worker. Her colleagues are Catholic Annie Conlon (Katherine Devlin), who has an unpredictable streak, and Protestant Tommy Foster (Nathan Braniff), sometimes too earnest and loyal for his own good.

Along with the station commander, Helen McNally (Joanne Crawford), and their trainers, the rookies have been through tragedy and joy. In the first season, Tommy’s mentor, the dedicated Gerry Cliff (Richard Dormer), was killed, leaving behind a widow, Sergeant Sandra Cliff (Andi Osho), who was still on the force. Annie received death threats and had to move away from her home neighborhood. In the second season, she clashed and then bonded with the ambitious and more experienced new addition Shane Bradley (Frank Blake), and Grace began a romance with her patrol partner, the veteran cop and world-weary widower Stevie Neil (Martin McCann), who’s a stickler for rules. (Opposites attract!)

BritBox

These tight personal relationships make things more emotionally fraught for the team in Season 3’s six explosive new episodes. They face their toughest foes yet: Belfast’s elite. A crime ring involving cocaine smuggling and sex trafficking centers on a posh members’ club owned by a new character, icy Dana Morgan (Cathy Tyson), who is challenged by a familiar face from past seasons, calculating McIntyre gang matriarch Tina (Abigail McGibbon). In the mix is intelligence officer Paul “Colly” Collins (Michael Smile), who is running the “sneaky beakies,” or undercover cops. During the investigation, Grace crosses paths with a former client, troubled teen Lindsay (Aoife Hughes), which leads to a revelation about Grace’s past that threatens her relationship with Stevie.

“It’s quite realistic, not a Hollywood romance,” McCann told us back at the location for fictional Blackthorn Police Station. “They have more invested in each other. It adds an extra dimension to what can go wrong; the stakes are higher.” The actor grew up in West Belfast and confesses that as a wee lad, he just might have copied his friends and thrown a stone at the “peelers,” the town’s derogatory nickname for the police. “A career in the police force would’ve been seriously frowned upon. I’ve put Stevie in my mind from a similar area and background. He was more forward-thinking and joined the police service when some of his friends didn’t understand why.”

Related

11 Best BritBox Originals, Ranked

McCann hinted, “There are a few times in Season 3 where he does have to go against his nature for someone that he loves.” The action is ratcheted up too: “We’ve had days where the scenes were so intense and relentless emotionally and physically with moving cars, actors, stunt men, lots of screaming and shouting and jumping. You’re getting pelted with food and bottles.” Through shootouts, ambushes, car chases, and riots, the friends on the force protect each other.

BritBox

To make it as authentic as possible, the cast trained at the police academy and took the same rigorous firearms tests as cops. They also went on ride-alongs with the series’ police advisor, who is often on set to answer cast questions but remains anonymous and wears a disguise. We did the same ride, crisscrossing Belfast from the trendy city center shops and restaurants to the leafy wealthy enclaves (officers assigned there are jokingly called “lolly lickers” due to the perceived ease of the beat) to West Belfast, where “peace walls” separate neighborhoods that are mostly Irish republican/nationalist Catholic from ones that are British loyalist/unionist Protestant.

“I’d only ever seen one side of the peace wall. It wouldn’t have been normal for me to hang about over there or anything,” Braniff told us. The actor says he and Tommy had “similar upbringings.” Braniff grew up in working-class Belfast but later his family moved to the suburbs. This season, Tommy’s girlfriend, Constable Aisling Byrne (Dearbháile McKinney), develops PTSD after responding to a horrific car crash in the premiere. “It has a knock-on effect to her and Tommy’s relationship,” Braniff added. “He wants to support her however he can. But there is a line Tommy isn’t willing to cross and isn’t willing to let her cross for her own safety. He does things in series 3 where the audience will say, ‘Was that the good thing or the bad thing?’”

BritBox

At Aisling’s side at the bloody accident scene is Annie, who perhaps experiences the most pain this season as she copes with her mother’s terminal cancer and the return of the death threats — she even receives a black wreath and a bullet in the mail.

“Season 3 is very heavy for Annie,” said Devlin. “Throughout, there is that question, ‘Is it all worth it?’ She’s not afraid to push the boundaries or do things that people wouldn’t expect.”

Devlin, who went to a Catholic convent school, remembers growing up with the divide between her community and the Protestant one. “With Season 3, what I want for people to take away is to talk about really hard things, whether that’s grief, trauma, or mental health,” she added. “Blue Lights isn’t your typical sexy cop drama that’s sleek and polished. It’s rough and ready and organic and real…. I really love when a TV show isn’t afraid. There’s a fearless element to what [we’re] trying to portray.”

That formula is what elevates the action on Blue Lights, no matter what may be lurking just around the corner.

Stumble, November 13, BritBox