Dan McGinn 
To lose one beloved ‘Blue Lights’ character last year was unfortunate. But to lose two this time around would have been disastrous. (SPOILER ALERT) Yet this was the scenario ‘Blue Lights’ viewers were facing at the end of last week’s penultimate episode when a passing car belonging to Sian Brooke’s Grace Ellis and Martin McCann’s Stevie Neil was hit with a bullet. Fans of the BBC1 show had witnessed Alfie Lawless’ young boy Henry Thompson accidentally discharging a gun hidden …
So let’s start with the good news. (SPOILER ALERT!!) After his beating in last week’s episode in a Belfast nightclub during a botched surveillance operation organised by Des Eastwood’s DS Murray Canning, Nathan Braniff’s Constable Tommy Foster was still alive. Katherine Devlin’s Constable Annie Conlon was on the warpath, though – pulling into the car park of Blackthorn Police Station as if she had just navigated Gambon Corner. As DS Canning and Frank Blake’s Constable Shane Bradley hunched over a …
The latest installment of ‘Blue Lights’ began with a tight close up of Seamus O’Hara’s Lee Thompson as he faced questions about the discovery of £30,000 in the boot of one of his taxis. Claiming it was the sum collected for charitable donations towards a new community centre in Mount Eden, he produced a statement corroborating his claim from its chairman, Dan Gordon’s veteran loyalist Rab McKendry. However Jonathan Harden and Joanne Crawford’s Inspectors Jonty Johnston and Helen McNally were …
After the conclusion of last week’s episode of ‘Blue Lights,’ nerves were fraying on the loyalist Mount Eden estate as residents fretted about a possible paramilitary feud. (SPOILER ALERT!!) The shooting last week of Chris Corrigan’s Jim Dixon sent shockwaves through the community and catapulted Blackthorn Police Station into a flurry of activity. Although you wouldn’t have known it from the start of this week’s episode, as Katherine Devlin’s PC Annie Conlon and Frank Blake’s PC Shane Bradley woke up …
It was a bit of a subdued start to the latest episode of ‘Blue Lights’. (SPOILERS ALERT!!) Nathan Braniff’s PC Tommy Foster was on a date with Dearbhaile McKinney’s fellow police officer Aisling after persuading her in last week’s opening episode of Series Two to go out with him. With her based in Derry/Londonderry and him in Belfast, they chose the rather unglamorous venue of a bus serving breakfast in a car park at the Glenshane Pass to meet up. …
Here we go. Series Two of ‘Blue Lights’ has landed and after an electrifying debut last year, the boulder has rolled back down the hill. Twelve months ago, Adam Patterson and Declan Lawn delivered not just the best Belfast TV drama to hit our screens but a cop show that could compete with the very best. Expectations for this series have subsequently rocketed and understandably so – especially now that the BBC has guaranteed a third and fourth series. Let’s …
So here we are – the final episode of this series of ‘Blue Lights’. And again, it only seems fair to fire another warning shot to those reading this review to expect a lot of spoilers from previous episodes. So if you’ve not yet seen all five episodes preceding this one, you should probably watch them first before reading this. With viewers still reeling from the events of last week’s episode, ‘Blue Lights’ immediately thrust its audience into the mania …
We hear a lot about the last 20 years being a Golden Age for television and with some justification. But right now it really feels like a Golden Age for Irish TV comedy and drama. After years of developing directing, writing, acting and film production talent, stories set in Dublin and Cork are really making their mark. Sharon Horgan’s Apple TV+ black comedy ‘Bad Sisters‘ was last year’s most exhilarating new show. RTE and AMC’s crime drama ‘Kin‘ with Clare …
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.
After three episodes carefully cultivating characters and their story arcs, the ‘Blue Lights’ writing team decided to shake things up. Tonight’s instalment was largely in flashback, with Fran Harris, Adam Patterson and Declan Lawn framing their latest tale around a chaotic night shift for the officers of Blackthorn Police Station. The episode began with Aoibheann McCann’s Police Ombudsman investigator Grace Gilroy being dispatched to find out if Blackthorn’s officers could have done more to prevent a death during the previous …
Having got off to a good start in its first two episodes and earned the admiration of boxing legend Frank Bruno, many ‘Blue Lights’ viewers have been wondering how the show will kick on as it reaches the halfway point. Adam Patterson and Declan Lawn’s series has done a pretty good job up until now of establishing its characters and opening up several storylines. But now we’ve reached the halfway point, this is the moment when it really needs to …
Episode two of ‘Blue Lights’ began with Issac Heslip’s drug dealer JP Jr dropping off pills at a house in an affluent neighbourhood. The dealer whizzed around south Belfast in an e-scooter and turned out to be the same lad who rode a bike in the previous episode and taunted Nathan Braniff’s rookie PSNI officer Tommy Foster. The drugs he dealt, however, were part of a bad batch sourced through Dublin by the McIntyre gang. Soon overdoses were taking place …
In October 2019, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute published an assessment of police reforms in Northern Ireland. The authors Dr Marina Caprini and Junseo Hwang chronicled in their article the experience of policing from the Troubles to the Good Friday Agreement. They noted the evolution of policing from the Patten Commission through to St Andrews Agreement to the 2010 Hillsborough Castle Agreement and highlighted the challenges faced by the PSNI as well as its achievements. Both authors observed the …
And so this is it. One last outing for ‘Derry Girls’… and what a final outing! Lisa McGee set her final episode of the sitcom one year on from the events of the previous night’s heartwrenching episode. It began with a montage of images from previous episodes, playing to the sound of the bells of the Angelus. Donna Traynor – who else? – was on TV screens asking the question on every ‘Derry Girls’ fan’s lips: “Could this be the …
When is a series finale not a finale? When Lisa McGee concocts a bonus episode of ‘Derry Girls’. Up until a few weeks ago, many of us had been expecting May 17 to be the night when we finally said goodbye to McGee’s hugely successful Channel 4 sitcom. But then she revealed there would be an additional climactic episode set against the backdrop of the Good Friday Agreement. That hour long episode will air tonight. But that meant last night’s …
It was ‘Derry Girls’ but not as we know it – yet strangely, also as we know it. The fifth episode of the final series of the Channel 4 sitcom was not about Erin, Orla, Michelle, Clare and even the supremely irritating, Jenny Joyce. It was all about their mothers instead. We saw all five of the mammies as parents and as teenagers as Lisa McGee’s sitcom played with dual narratives about a school reunion and the events of a …
When it comes to cinema, stories about loyalists have been few and far between. The situation has been slightly better, though, on the small screen. Graham Reid’s ‘The Billy Plays,’ Mike Leigh’s ‘Four Days in July’ and Gary Mitchell’s ‘As the Beast Sleeps,’ all brought loyalist voices to primetime TV drama over the years. Those plays, however, were only watched outside of Northern Ireland by audiences willing to engage with dramas about a conflict most people in England, Scotland, Wales …
So now we know for definite. ‘Derry Girls’ writer Lisa McGee has confirmed the Channel 4 sitcom will end this month with an episode built around the Good Friday Agreement referendum. Not only that but it will be a bonus extended seventh episode. If that wasn’t enough, McGee revealed that Tara Lynne O’Neill’s Ma Mary and Kathy Keira Clarke’s Aunt Sarah will also get a special flashback episode next week focusing on their youth. A word of warning, though, for …
There are few institutions in Northern Ireland that inspire the same kind of love and affection that Barry’s managed in Portrush. Mention the name of the amusement park and locals will wax lyrical about its rides over the years from the Cyclone to the Jumping Astro, the Ghost Train to the Big Dipper. Such was the love for Barry’s, you half expected a day of national mourning when it was announced in September 2021 that the amusements were closing, with …
It’s been one week since the opening episode of ‘Derry Girls’ third and final series and it seems a hell of a lot has happened. Lisa McGee’s wisecrack about Catholic under-representation in the RUC sparked a lively debate on this forum after our review – proving yet again that the past is not quite another country when it comes to this part of the world. Photos surfaced of Liam Neeson posing and pouting with two of the show’s stars – Saoirse …
