We’re two thirds of the way into Series Three and as with previous reviews, there will inevitably be spoilers about this and other episodes.
So if you haven’t watched Episode Four of Series Three, take my advice.
Wait until you have watched it before reading any more of this.
As for the rest of you, buckle up.
Its going to be a bumpy ride.
(SPOILERS ALERT!!)
Episode Four began in sugar sweet fashion, with writers Declan Lawn and Adam Patterson giving us a moment of domestic bliss as Martin McCann’s Stevie Neil and Sian Brooke’s Grace Ellis brushed their teeth in their ensuite.
The two of them engaged in some post pillow talk with their conversation inevitably drifting towards work.
Both of them wondered how Katherine Devlin’s Annie Conlon was faring after her mother passed away at the end of last week’s episode.
With Annie returning to the Glens for her mum’s wake with a dissident death threat hanging over her, Stevie tried to reassure Grace that Blackthorn Police Station had its “best man on the job”.
That man turned out to be Neil Kerry’s gruff Sergeant Lawrence McCloskey who stood on patrol outside the wake house, munching sandwiches from a paper plate as he scanned the horizon for dissidents.
Emerging from her house with even more sandwiches, Maria Connolly’s Aunt Bea urged him to come inside, observing: “You look like a peeler standing there.”
When McCloskey confirmed he was, she muttered: “For God’s sake.”
Bea’s demeanour remained sour when Andi Osho’s Sandra Cliff popped into the kitchen to offer some help.
“This is supposed to be a wake – not a bloody police station,” Bea grumped as she rebuffed Sandra’s offer and organised a crack squad of relatives buttering sandwiches and making cups of tea.
Meanwhile in the exclusive members club she had established in south Belfast, Cathy Tyson’s Dana Morgan was going about her business when a member of staff told her that a woman had come to see her.
The woman had said she was interested in becoming a member of the club but when she was told they were no longer accepting anyone, she insisted she wasn’t leaving.
Rising from her desk, Dana headed out to investigate and found Abigail McGibbon’s Tina McIntyre waiting for her.
Asking how she had tracked her down, Dana was reminded by Tina how Charlie Maher’s Dublin criminal Fogerty had engaged her to find a suitable property for the club.
Tina warned Dana that Fogerty was a liability who was going to bring their criminal enterprise down.
“He’s running this place like it’s inner city Dublin. You can’t do that,” she observed, telling her that in Belfast the police played by different rules.
“Getting rid of me was a mistake,” Tina insisted.
Back in Blackthorn, Aisling was getting a dressing down from Stevie and Joanne Crawford’s Inspector Helen McNally for returning to the house of Patrick Buchanan’s Chief Inspector Gavin Bunting on her own in last week’s episode and attacking and arresting him after witnessing him assaulting his wife.
Aisling was unapologetic, though, insisting Bunting’s wife might have been killed if she hadn’t intervened.
As she left, Aisling was ordered to hand over her gun.
Asked by Aisling if he had her back, Tommy went in to see Helen and Stevie and remonstrated with them about penalising his girlfriend.
“Where does it say if we’re worried about someone, we can’t check up on them in our own time? This is wrong,” he fumed before rushing to tell Aisling he’d just stood up for her.
Back at the wake, Bea sent McCloskey on an errand to fetch flowers from the nearby parochial house.
There he encountered Nigel O’Neill’s droll parish priest who jokingly asked if he had come to confess his sins.
The priest’s jovial mood quickly vanished when McCloskey noticed something wasn’t quite right about the box containing the flowers.
McCloskey carefully opened it, revealing a wreath with a bullet inside.
Sprinting onto the beach opposite the family house, he ushered Annie and Sandra back inside to grab their belongings and bundled them into a car.
Annie apologised to her mum in the coffin, while Bea badgered the officers to explain why they were making a bolt for it.
In the flat she shared with Tommy, Aisling was clutching the rosary beads of the road accident victim who died in her presence and decided to go to west Belfast to give them back to his grieving parents instead.
This wasn’t without its risks, though, given that the accident victim was the son of a dissident republican.
Meanwhile back in Blackthorn, Grace was trying to get Aoife Hughes’ Lindsay Singleton to open up in an interview room after last week’s brush with abduction and death at the hands of Fogerty’s goons.
As Michael Smiley’s Colly and Brendan Quinn’s Sean Mulholland watched Grace struggle to get Lindsay to talk, she decided to dig deep and use a startling personal admission to regain the teenager’s trust.
But did her tactic work?
After last week’s dip in form, Episode Four struggled to get Series Three back on track.
Of the four episodes so far, sadly this was the weakest by some distance.
Once more every scene featuring Cathy Tyson’s Dana Morgan felt overacted and stiff.
Plotlines that should have had much more impact like Aisling’s struggle with PTSD underwhelmed.
While a falling out between Grace and Stevie felt jarring.
On the plus side, Katherine Devlin continued to impress as Annie, while Brooke felt a bit more in this episode like the Grace of old.
Keery undoubtedly stole the show as McCloskey revealed a new side to his character.
But overall there wasn’t much meat to savour.
And while Angela Griffin did a decent job in the director’s chair, it still felt like a surprisingly uneven episode, as it tried to strike the right tone and plot a narrative course that could yet pay off in future episodes.
It’s still too early to say but there is no doubt this was one of the flattest episodes we have ever seen.
With two episodes to go, there’s still time for ‘Blue Lights’ to get its fizz back.
Here’s hoping Patterson and Lawn are able to deliver.
(Episode Four of Series Three of ‘Blue Lights’ was broadcast on BBC1 on October 20, 2025 with all episodes available on the BBC iPlayer)
Dan McGinn is a journalist who was previously the Ireland Political Editor and Ireland Deputy Editor of the Press Association and has worked for the Irish News, Belfast Telegraph and other publications and for TV and radio. He currently works in communications and public affairs and is also a film and television critic with his own blog They’ll Love It In Pomona which covers the latest cinema and television releases.
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