Heading towards the halfway point in the third series, the question some ‘Blue Lights’ viewers have been asking was: could it maintain its strong start?
Before we try to answer that, I’ll again warn readers that, as with previous reviews of episodes of ‘Blue Lights,’ this post will inevitably contain spoilers about previous episodes and this one.
So if you haven’t watched Episode Three or haven’t even started Series Three, please look away now.
(SPOILER ALERT!!!)
After discovering a device under her car at the end of Episode Two, Andrea Irvine’s Chief Superintendent Nicola Robinson was packing up and preparing to leave home.
As forensics combed the grounds around her house, a news report about the targeting of her home was broadcast on the UTN channel in another cameo appearance by the former BBC journalist Stephen Walker.
As the Chief Superintendent’s colleagues came to terms with the significantly heightened dissident threat, Katherine Devlin’s PC Annie Conlon was getting a hard time from her aunt Bea, played by Maria Connolly, about being an officer from a nationalist background and the knock-on effect it had had on her family.
When Annie sought to allay her concerns about the threat, Bea nodded towards the TV and observed: “Is that why your mother had to sell the house ‘cos we didn’t need to worry?”
Going upstairs to check on her terminally ill mum, Annie jumped out of her skin when a bird flew in through the bedroom window and perched itself on a cabinet.
Being superstitious, Annie interpreted this as a symbol of imminent death.
But the question begged: who’s? Her mum, Annie’s or a colleague’s?
In Belfast, Nathan Braniff’s Tommy woke up in his flat to find his girlfriend and PSNI colleague Dearbhaile McKinney’s Aisling was not lying beside him.
Heading into the living room, he found her praying by the window as she tried to process the trauma of watching a young man die in a horrendous car crash during last week’s episode.
When asked if she was okay, Aisling bit Tommy’s head off.
Empathising with her, Tommy informed her that the first person he had ever been close to who had died was his squad car mentor from Series One Gerry Cliff.
Tommy told her this had made him appreciate the shock of an unexpected death.
Touched by his story, Aisling rather unconvincingly insisted she was okay.
In a harbour along the Antrim coast, Charlie Maher’s Fogerty was working with a gang who loaded drugs with military precision onto a boat bound for Scotland.
Overseeing the operation was Cathy Tyson’s Dana Morgan who donned a black flat cap and rather dramatically sipped coffee from a silver flask in the sea breeze like she was rehearsing for a role in an espionage series.
Approaching her, Fogerty referred to the targeting of Chief Inspector Robinson, observing the Derry dissident gang hadn’t “got their scalp”.
“They did enough – the game’s changed,” Dana confidently fired back, steadfast in her belief that the police would now be sufficiently distracted by the dissident threat to enable the Ginley gang to continue their drug operations without interference.
Controlling the coastline and ensuring they could ferry drugs to Scotland was all that mattered, she reminded the Dubliner.
As Annie packed up her belongings to head back to Belfast, a white van similar to the one the Derry dissidents were driving in last week’s episode trundled along the coastline.
Checking under her car, Annie was relieved to find no device but then she spotted the van.
When it pulled up outside the laneway, she briefly froze as the driver got out and then frantically reached for her revolver in the front seat of the car.
Bursting into action and pointing her weapon at him, she ordered him to drop his bag and lie on the ground putting his hands behind his head.
When Bea intervened, it emerged the suspect was actually the local plumber who had come to do an honest day’s work but had sprung his own leak after having a gun pointed at him.
In Belfast, Joanne Crawford’s Inspector Helen McNally visited Chief Superintendent Robinson who told her the house she was abandoning had been her home for 15 years.
Describing her job as a “rucksack of secrets that gets heavier and heavier until you can’t move,” Robinson confided in Helen that she had been jealous of her because she was unburdened by the kind of information she was privy to.
All that was about to change, however, with Michael Smiley’s C3 officer Colly keen to bring Helen into his orbit and offer her access to intelligence about the criminal underworld.
“It’s time to put on the rucksack Helen, feel the weight of knowing things you never wanted to know,” the Chief Superintendent advised her.
In an intelligence briefing with Gardai, US and British intelligence counterparts, Colly was having another secret added to his rucksack.
Colly was stunned when a Garda intelligence officer called Eugene informed him that the person running the drugs operation was a “clean skin” with no obvious links to the Ginleys.
Back in Blackthorn, Andi Osho’s Sandra Cliff talked to Annie and expressed major reservations about her visiting her terminally ill mum after the plumber incident.
Appealing to her goodwill given her family situation, Annie talked Sandra into not escalating things up the chain of command.
Tommy arrived in Blackthorn for his shift clutching a letter from the Police Ombudsman and angrily told Frank Blake’s Shane Bradley he had received one.
He dismissed Shane’s protestations that he had appealed to the Ombudsman to keep Tommy out of their probe into the accessing of a drug overdose victim’s phone.
At the daily briefing, Martin McCann’s Acting Skipper Stevie Neil welcomed his colleagues to “another day on the sunlit uplands” before telling them that the dissident threat level had been raised to severe and they needed to scan locations at all times for potential danger.
Grace was paired with Shane on the day shift, Tommy with Aisling and Annie was confined to base.
As Helen arrived for what turned out to be a really rigorous security vetting session at C3 headquarters, Colly called Abigail McGibbon’s Tina McIntyre in a bid to extract intelligence from her by pretending to be someone from a dental clinic.
Tina didn’t, however, immediately jump at his bait, as he promised to make the exchange of information worthwhile.
In Blackthorn, Sandra expressed concern to Stevie that some of the response officers were suffering from the “two year fade” – a condition where some start their job with great enthusiasm, only to begin looking out of the police two years later.
On hearing this, Stevie observed his girlfriend Sian Brooke’s Grace might be suffering from the condition.
Tommy and Aisling were called to a suspected domestic incident at the home of a Chief Inspector, Patrick Buchanan’s Gavin Bunting after a phone call was received from his young daughter at the address.
While the Chief Inspector and his wife played down the call, Aisling still wasn’t convinced everything was rosy – noting that as they left the house Mrs Bunting had asked her if she was called Angela.
Tommy dismissed Aisling’s hunch but his girlfriend wasn’t prepared to let go of her suspicion.
As Grace checked in on the welfare of Aoife Hughes’ Lindsay Singleton, Tina confronted Fogerty about using the dissidents to target senior police officers.
Insisting he should have forewarned her, she was told by Fogerty that if she stayed out of the Ginley gang’s way, her son would be safe in prison.
But would she listen?
With the previous two episodes of ‘Blue Lights’ setting a high bar for Episode Three, it was somewhat disappointing that this week’s instalment fell short of their standards.
While the moment featuring Annie and the white van was intentionally anti-climactic, it just lacked sufficient fizz.
The scene between Fogerty and Dana also underwhelmed (as most in the series have done) and the dialogue seemed really stilted.
On the plus side, Katherine Devlin was undoubtedly the episode’s star performer – drawing a vulnerability out of Annie who up until now has been a pretty feisty character.
Smiley continued to delight as Colly, while Crawford, Irvine, Blake and Osho remained strong and steady.
Brooke and McCann were unusually subdued.
Indeed there were some worrying signs that the latter was being straitjacketed by a storyline that required him to simply wander around all the time looking worried and confused.
Braniff and McKinney also struggled in an episode that felt more like a trudge than a race.
It’s far too premature to claim ‘Blue Lights’ might be suffering from its version of the two year fade.
If Episode Three was a dip in form, here’s hoping it is temporary because undoubtedly the elements are still there for a series that can eclipse its immediate predecessor.
(Episode Three of Series Three of ‘Blue Lights’ was broadcast on BBC1 on October 13, 2025 with all episodes also made available on the BBC iPlayer)
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