After last week’s riproaring start to the third season of ‘Blue Lights,’ how did Episode Two fare?
Before we find out, a quick reminder that as with reviews of episodes of previous series of ‘Blue Lights,’ this piece will inevitably contain some spoilers.
So if you don’t want to know what happened at the end of Episode One or part of Episode Two, please refrain from reading this and return when you’ve viewed both episodes.
(SPOILERS ALERT!!!)
Episode Two began with Aoife Hughes’ Lindsay Singleton in a bit of a flap over the murder of her friend, Jack McBride Marshall’s Sandy.
Frantically stuffing her treasured belongings from the children’s home into a holdall, she headed to school but while crossing a pedestrian bridge found Charlie Maher’s sinister Dublin gangland figure Fogerty waiting for her.
“That’s a very big school bag. Are you going somewhere?” he menacingly asked.
Pretending Sandy had committed suicide, he dangled the prospect of a “front of house” job in a Dublin “club” at Lindsay but insisted she leave the bag with him.
“You cannot run, Lindsay,” he warned.
“That’s a fool’s game.”
Meanwhile in Blackthorn, Sian Brooke’s Grace was getting worked up about Lindsay’s safety at the children’s home after Sandy’s death.
She clashed with Andi Osho’s Sergeant Sandra Cliff about their need to intervene and was bluntly told it was not her job.
Sandra was miffed that Martin McCann’s Stevie, in his new role as acting Skipper, had not backed her up.
Afterwards as Grace moaned to her boyfriend about Sandra, Stevie fell into line and told her that the Sergeant was only doing her job.
While Katherine Devlin’s Annie visited her dying mum in the Glens, Aiobheann McCann’s Police Ombudsman Grace Gilroy was back in Blackthorn with her Mia Wallace from ‘Pulp Fiction’ hairdo.
Meeting Joanne Crawford’s Inspector Helen McNally and Andrea Irvine’s Chief Superintendent Nicola Robinson, she told them she needed to speak to Grace and Stevie about Sandy, noting he died an hour after he had been released from police custody.
Her demand was flatly turned down by Chief Superintendent Robinson because it was a matter for C3 intelligence and C1 organised crime.
However the Ombudsman rep quickly changed tack and made a demand to speak to two other officers, Frank Blake’s Shane and Nathan Braniff’s Tommy about “a serious breach of protocol”.
As Chief Inspector McNally was left wondering if she had a discipline problem, over at The Deanery, Cathy Tyson’s manager of Belfast’s new exclusive member’s club, Dana Morgan was critiquing the performance of her own employee, Fogerty.
Wondering if he really understood human nature, Dana asked him if someone he loved was thrown off a roof how would he react?
After delivering a warning that Lindsay would get him in the end, Dana cooked up a plan to distract the police from the Ginley gang’s activities by paying a dissident republican gang from Derry to target officers.
“They can’t fight on two fronts. We can,” she confidently declared.
Her plan involved Matthew Forsythe’s solicitor Aodhan McAllister and Conor Mullen’s shifty cocaine addicted accountant George Thompson transferring a lot of dough to the dissident republican gang – a move that both were extremely nervous about.
Meanwhile back at Blackthorn, there was joy in the briefing room when Stevie was unveiled as the temporary Skipper.
That delight was soon tempered when Shane and Tommy were summoned for questioning by the Ombudsman for accessing George Thompson’s smartphone while he recovered in hospital from a drugs overdose in last week’s episode.
Taking his place in the hot seat as the Skipper, Stevie looked a little overawed by the potential “four dimensional chess” game he was facing when Sandra showed him the ropes.
When he formally assumed the reins, he was immediately thrust into an intense scenario, with reports of a two vehicle road traffic collision on the outskirts of the city.
Stevie dispatched Annie and Dearbhaile McKinney’s Aisling to the scene.
The incident would prove not only harrowing for the two officers but it was also more complex than it first appeared – setting in train a series of events that would expose some of Blackthorn’s finest to real danger.
After the excellent start to last week’s series, it was a delight to see writers Declan Lawn and Adam Patterson and director Jack Casey building on that and delivering an even more thrilling instalment.
This week’s episode had two really outstanding moments.
The first was the sequence involving the road accident which was superbly written, slickly directed and was impressively acted by Devlin, McKinney, Osho, McCann and Paul Storrs as one of the injured victims.
Admittedly, it was a distressing watch and, no doubt, it was especially tough for anyone who had ever experienced a serious car crash.
Nevertheless one detail about Storrs’ character really amped up the tension in what was a deft piece of writing by Patterson and Lawn.
A subsequent sequence in the nationalist Carrick View area involving Aisling, Annie, Tommy and Grace was also unbearably tense, with Patrick McBrearty and Orla Mullen turning in excellent performances as parents struggling to comprehend what was being imparted to them.
Devlin, McKinney, Braniff and Brooke shone in this sequence and the episode, while Michael Smiley continued to delight as the PSNI intelligence officer Paul ‘Colly’ Collins who opened the door to his one time protege, Chief Inspector McNally being privy to very sensitive information.
Crawford, Osho, McCann, Blake and Irvine provided sturdy support, while Hughes did a pretty good job as the teen who might just hold the key to thwarting Fogerty and the Ginley gang’s activities.
There was a welcome reappearance by Abigail McGibbon’s wily Tina McIntyre from Series One and Two who Aodhan McAllister nervously confided in about the Ginley gang.
Forsythe showed more range in this episode than we have ever seen before as McAllister struggled with the Ginley gang’s demands.
Aiobheann McCann was her usual blunt self as she reappeared as the Ombudsman investigator.
Director Casey, cinematographer Paul Morris and editor Helen Sheridan did an excellent job ratcheting up the tension and, as a result, you could argue with some justification this was one of the show’s best ever episodes.
If Lawn and Patterson can keep this up, Series Three could clear the high bar set by Series One.
That would be no mean feat.
(Episode Two of Series Three of ‘Blue Lights’ aired on BBC 1 on October 6, 2025 with all episodes made available on the BBC iPlayer on September 29, 2025)
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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