Blue Lights is still the most arresting cop show on TV
The world did not need another cop show when Blue Lights debuted on BBC One last year, which was probably one reason why at first no one paid it much attention. The name didn’t do much to inspire, the setting – frontline policing in Belfast – was hardly high glamour, and the logline, following three new bobbies as the scales were lifted from their eyes, was bog standard.
Wrong, it turned out, on every count: Blue Lights was a revelation, a hit for the BBC that was quickly recommissioned. As told by Declan Lawn and Adam Patterson, two investigative documentary-makers who’d cut their teeth on Panorama and who knew the turf, response policing in post-troubles Northern Ireland was both riveting and revelatory.
The pillars of Blue Lights’ success, however, were the pillars of all good drama: characters, relationships and a story set in a world both vital and credible. That world was provided by Lawn and Patterson’s understanding of Belfast now and of the historical fault-lines that underpin every interaction between the police and the public. The characters and relationships came from a superb coterie of actors, foremost among them Siân Brooke and the newcomers Katherine Devlin and Nathan Braniff.
With all of that established, series two just required a new story and in that regard – at first – it seemed as if the writers were content with more of the same. Belfast is in chaos, there are drugs everywhere and with government cutbacks, not enough police to do anything about it. A new broom, the smarmy DS Murray Canning (Desmond Eastwood) from series one, is brought in to sort it out and instantly rubs everyone at the Blackthorn Station up the wrong way with his doctrine of containment over enforcement. The two warring loyalists who run the Mount Eden Estate are replaced by a new kingpin, Lee Thompson (Seamus O’hara). But he still rules with a rod of iron.
It doesn’t take long, however, for series two to catch light, and once it does it is irresistible. New boss Thompson turns out to have some noble – if twisted – motives, creating a form of moral chaos to go with the actual chaos all around him. It all goes to foment an environment in which anything could, and does, happen, but crucially, one that skips effortlessly from comedy to breakneck drama, from profundity to arguments about cake. When you have writers and a cast who can sustain that tension, you have must-see TV, both effective and affecting.
In days gone by I would have seen that Jamie’s Air Fryer Meals was subtitled “with Tefal” and cried foul. After all, Jamie Oliver is a long-time Tefal ambassador (where ambassador means “he’s paid”) and Tefal make air fryers, and one of Tefal’s super-duper air fryers was used prominently in Jamie’s Air Fryer Meals with Tefal
(Channel 4). There was even a QR code in the advert breaks in case you wanted to buy one.
Basically then, Jamie’s Air Fryer Meals with Tefal is itself an advert. It could be called Tefal’s Air Fryer Meals
with Jamie. The question is whether this is a problem or not.
I have been watching a lot of Youtube and Tiktok cookery in recent months, courtesy of my son (who, through short-form video instruction, is now a keen cook). All of this type of stuff is advertising, selling something. Seen that way, what Oliver is doing here is merely playing catch-up. Does it really matter if he’s telling us that air fryers are great because he’s been paid to do it, so long as that fact is apparent in the programme and the recipes work? Personally, I don’t think so. Fifty-minute roast chicken and a remarkable baked Alaska certainly sweeten the deal.
What’s striking about coming back to Oliver after a dousing in Youtube is that he now looks like a born Youtuber from before Youtube was invented. He’s preternaturally enthusiastic, verbally elastic and perfect for the snappy edit. He has been serving up what we now call “content”, smashing, hacking, wanging and happy days-ing it to camera, his whole career. For this programme he even brought in Poppy O’toole
– the “potato queen” on social media and an air-fryer proselytiser – which is another trick from Youtube land, where there are no competitors, only pals.
Does it work? I mean I haven’t bought an air fryer yet, but only because I haven’t got the countertop space and I’m scared of new things, not because Oliver’s recipes were sponsored by Tefal. I guess it’s about whether you’re a sucker if you know you’re being suckered. Blue Lights ★★★★★ Jamie’s Air Fryer Meals ★★★