Thin blue line’s snapping
BELFAST-set police drama BLUE LIGHTS is back tonight (BBC1, 9pm). This is both good news and bad. It’s good news because it’s brilliant. Series one was one of last year’s best new shows.
And it’s bad because, having watched the first episode of this second run, I’m forced to admit I was talking rubbish the other day when I wrote about plausibility in TV dramas, suggesting it wasn’t that important.
In last Thursday’s paper, I argued, as you may or may not recall (I’m rather hoping it’s the latter), that plausibility was something we shouldn’t get so uptight about, as long as a story has the what-happens-next factor. Wrong. Utter nonsense. What a twit.
If you still have that day’s paper lying around, please turn to the TV section and draw a big pointy dunce’s hat on my head.
No, clearly there are many dramas where believability matters enormously, and Blue Lights is a prime example.
To get the most out of this programme, we need to believe not only in the characters and the terrifying situations in which they can find themselves but also in the sheer ordinariness that goes with much of the job.
We need to believe the show paints an accurate picture of life for those who patrol Belfast’s streets: that one minute you could be sitting in your patrol car, chatting with your partner about anything from cakes to Johnny Cash, the next you could be staring death in the face as a violent, desperate druggie threatens to stab you.And me, I absolutely do believe all that, because the writing is tremendous, the pacing spot-on, and the characters speak like real people.
The new recruits we met at the start – Grace, Annie and Tommy (Sian Brooke, Katherine Devlin and Nathan Braniff) – are a little less wet behind the ears now.
You still worry about them (you really do!) but it’s no longer naivety that’s their biggest challenge, just the everyday perils of the job.
Storyline-wise, smarmy ex-CID bloke Murray Canning (Desmond Eastwood) has been brought back in to lead the fight against a drug-fuelled crime wave.And he’s loving the fact that this lets him throw his weight around.
Illustrating this guy’s obnoxiousness to perfection is the briefest of moments from an early scene, where he summons an officer from across the room by snapping his fingers at him.
Snapping one’s fingers, I think we’d all agree, is the mark of an arrogant git.
Unless, of course, one thinks one is George Michael in the video for Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go.
Actually, this guy loves himself so much, that wouldn’t entirely surprise me.