{"id":713411,"date":"2025-11-19T21:33:26","date_gmt":"2025-11-19T18:33:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=713411"},"modified":"2025-11-19T21:33:26","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T18:33:26","slug":"on-the-belfast-beat-with-the-cast-of-blue-lights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=713411","title":{"rendered":"On the Belfast Beat With the Cast of Blue Lights"},"content":{"rendered":"
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TV & Movies<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

On the Belfast Beat With the Cast of Blue Lights<\/em><\/h1>\n<\/div>\n
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By <\/span>Anna Cafolla<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

November 19, 2025<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Katherine Devlin as Constable Annie Conlon in Blue Lights<\/em> Season 3, now streaming on BritBox.<\/span>Photo: BBC\/Two Cities Television<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<\/div>\n
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It\u2019s a cool May morning in East Belfast, and Blackthorn Police Station is quiet and still. Desks sit empty, some chairs topped with bottle-green standard-issue PSNI police caps. In a long corridor, a solitary plaque commemorates Constable Gerry Cliff, 1969\u20132023: \u201cWho dedicated his life to protect us.\u201d Then, faintly overheard: \u201cCut!\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019m on the set of Blue Lights<\/em>, the BBC\u2019s Belfast-set police drama that follows a cohort of flawed, idealistic rookies as they navigate one of the most complicated policing landscapes in Europe. (The third season is currently streaming on BritBox in the US.) The show\u2019s writers and creators, Declan Lawn and Adam Patterson\u2014who met while making BBC documentaries about Northern Ireland\u2014anchor it in the realities of current-day Northern Ireland, where paramilitary influence, drug trafficking, and domestic violence are all too common, and where psychic scar tissue from the Troubles still lingers. (There is lightness and a bit of fun in Blue Lights<\/em>, too\u2014romance, late-night craic<\/em>, Westlife sing-alongs, and homemade cupcakes eaten in patrol cars.) With British TV full of cozy crime dramas, the grit and emotional clarity of Blue Lights<\/em> is bracingly fresh. And since its debut in 2023, the show has become something of an international breakout, its second season winning a BAFTA for best drama.<\/p>\n

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On my visit to set I meet \u201cRoy\u201d (not his real name), a former Belfast detective and long-standing show advisor whose experiences have shaped the series\u2019s most powerful beats. (\u201cRoy gives us the visceral stuff you can\u2019t invent,\u201d Patterson tells me later.) He takes me on a ride-along through Belfast\u2014together with Lawn, cast members Katherine Devlin (Annie) and Nathan Braniff (Tommy), and the show\u2019s executive producer Stephen Wright.<\/p>\n

We leave the fictional station Blackthorn and drive past the neighborhood of Ardoyne\u2014volatile ground during the city\u2019s divisive July 12 parades\u2014and into the bowels of North Belfast. Here, two communities\u2014Loyalist and Republican, Protestant and Catholic\u2014live side by side. Roy explains that sectarian tensions routinely boil over, and \u201cbusiness as usual\u201d could mean 200 people fighting hand-to-hand, escalating to riots or petrol bombs depending on the day. Blue Lights<\/em> episodes, which are informed by the testimony of dozens of ex-officers, capture exactly that unease, and Roy is a blunt sounding board for the show\u2019s cast and creators.<\/p>\n

Northern Ireland remains one of Europe\u2019s most dangerous places to be a woman; domestic violence lurks, Roy says, \u201cbehind the bigger political noise.\u201d (The same goes for drug-running, a central plot line in Season 3.) Blue Lights<\/em> also derives drama from the more subtle tensions of working within an entrenched bureaucracy. \u201cWe were taught there\u2019s three religions here: Catholic, Protestant, and police,\u201d Roy says. \u201cI joined to make a difference\u2014to police outside of \u2018green\u2019 and \u2018orange.\u2019\u201d But over time, he watched metrics replace deep, human community work. Blue Lights<\/em>\u2019s rookies are constantly caught between their desire to help and the machinery they work within.<\/p>\n

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From left, Blue Lights<\/em> cast members Nathan Braniff, Katherine Devlin, Martin McCann, and Sian Brooke.<\/p>\n

<\/span>Photo: BBC\/Two Cities Television<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Devlin, one of the cast\u2019s emerging stars, grew up some 50 miles from Belfast, in County Tyrone. Blue Lights<\/em> was Devlin\u2019s first major screen role after drama school; she had only just moved to London when she was called to Belfast to join the cast of Season 1.<\/p>\n

Season 3 pushes her character, Annie, into darker emotional territory as she becomes unmoored over her mother\u2019s death. \u201cNorthern Ireland has this potent relationship with grief\u2014generational trauma people were told to brush off or armor themselves against. I thought a lot about that.\u201d More people have died by suicide in this part of Ireland since the 1998 Good Friday Agreement than were killed during the 30-year Troubles.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis season I wanted to find Annie\u2019s softer colors, the quieter beats,\u201d Devlin continues. \u201cAnd I still question her motivations. Why would someone from her background choose policing, and keep choosing it?\u201d<\/p>\n

In the new episodes, the women characters drive Blue Lights\u2019s<\/em> most potent moments, whether that\u2019s Annie, her colleagues Grace Ellis (Si\u00e2n Brooke) and Aisling Byrne (Dearbh\u00e1ile McKinney), or their serious-minded boss, Sergeant Helen McNally (Joanne Crawford). Devlin acknowledges the power of female-driven narratives in a region where much of politics and pop culture has been fronted by men.<\/p>\n

The cast\u2019s intimacy after three seasons also deepens everything: \u201cWe\u2019ve gone so much further\u2014and I get all the gossip from our drivers,\u201d Devlin says. \u201cEvery day has an energy. Great scenes, even better wee chats.\u201d (Blue Lights<\/em> has already been renewed for a fourth season, but Devlin would love to take on arthouse work, too\u2014A24 films, Andrea Arnold, and Robert Eggers are all favorites.)<\/p>\n

As we drive past Belfast\u2019s infamous peace walls\u2014by day a tourist photo-op, by night a flashpoint for clashing youths\u2014Devlin\u2019s costar Braniff, a native of Belfast, reflects on what the show has opened up for him. \u201cI\u2019ve lived five minutes from some of these places and didn\u2019t truly know them. The show cracks open conversations about the past and how it shapes the present. That\u2019s still so important.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Later, on set, I watch Brooke film a charged confrontation between her character Grace\u2014a social worker turned police officer, the show\u2019s moral conscience\u2014and a wealthy man called George, who has facilitated a cocaine-delivery app for Belfast\u2019s moneyed elite. Brooke, who is English, tells me she\u2019d initially worried about joining a story so closely tied to a place she wasn\u2019t from. \u201cPeople here are forthright\u2014if it\u2019s wrong, they\u2019ll say,\u201d she tells me. “But Belfast is a character: gritty, warm, witty, dry. I\u2019m so proud of what we\u2019ve made.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Brooke on set with two supporting actors from Season 3: Brendan Quinn (Sean Mulholland) and Conor Mullen (George McClelland).<\/p>\n

<\/span>Photo: Peter Marley<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Before making the show, Lawn says, he thought of the police as \u201ca monolith\u2014a uniform.\u201d Now he finds himself studying officers\u2019 faces on the street. \u201cWe were very cautious about doing this show,\u201d his co-creator Patterson adds. \u201cIt\u2019s a hot potato. It\u2019s hard to get anyone here to agree on anything. Making a drama that looks into the dark recesses of this place\u2014and having people from all sides champion it\u2014felt impossible. The only way we could do it was to be contemporary and completely honest. We could have been crucified.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Ultimately, they see Blue Lights<\/em> as part of a wider cultural moment rooted in a burgeoning interest in Ireland\u2019s complex past (and present). Between Lisa Magee\u2019s juggernaut Derry Girls<\/em> and shows like 2024\u2019s Say Nothing<\/em>, it\u2019s \u201clike America with Vietnam films in the \u201980s,\u201d says Lawn. \u201cThere\u2019s a collective moment where people start processing trauma through art.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Season 3, the writers thought about that idea of trauma, making their characters ask: Is it worth it?<\/em> Is the good in policing worth the sacrifice, the personal cost? One study purports that police officers experience 400-600 traumatic events over a career. In Season 1, the death of Constable Gerry Cliff\u2014shot by gangster Sully when trying to apprehend a drug deal\u2014shook fans. \u201cPeople still stop us in the street to ask us why the hell we killed Gerry,\u201d Patterson says. \u201cIn a lot of cop shows, someone dies and two episodes later they\u2019re forgotten. We wanted Gerry\u2019s death to permeate the series, because that\u2019s how life is.\u201d<\/p>\n

A few months after filming wraps, I speak to Devlin again when she\u2019s in New York, where the cast are amid a promo tour that involves pulling pints of Guinness at the famed Irish bar the Dead Rabbit. When I ask her what she thinks keeps Annie and the rookie crew going, she considers this for a moment. \u201cThere\u2019s stubbornness in her\u2014a ballsiness I don\u2019t<\/em> have,\u201d she says. \u201cBut there\u2019s also hope. A kind of hope people at home don\u2019t always say out loud. I think that\u2019s what the show is really about: people trying, even when it\u2019s hard. People choosing to try.\u201d<\/p>\n

Blue Lights is available to watch on BritBox now.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n

Source URL: http:\/\/vogue.com\/article\/blue-lights-season-three<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TV & Movies On the Belfast Beat With the Cast of Blue Lights By Anna Cafolla November 19, 2025 Katherine Devlin as Constable Annie Conlon in Blue Lights Season 3, now streaming on BritBox.Photo: BBC\/Two Cities Television It\u2019s a cool May morning in East Belfast, and Blackthorn Police Station is quiet and still. Desks sit […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":713412,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[50],"class_list":["post-713411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-vogue-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=713411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713411\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/713412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=713411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=713411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=713411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}