The Best Cop Show On TV Is Back With An Emotionally Charged Third Season

Blue Lights is a show about making tough choices. Like all the best police dramas, moral ambiguity is what makes this Belfast series tick. What is right and what is legal are not always the same thing. What does justice looks like for a young girl roped into a life of crime and abuse? What does it look like for a high-level drug dealer? Or a local businessman who – other than his penchant for young girls – is a pillar of the community?

In its first, excellent season, Blue Lights explored Belfast’s post-Troubles Catholic Separatist communities. We joined our new recruits to the PSNI (Police Service of Northern Ireland) as they drove through rough-and-tumble neighborhoods where citizens have about as much love for “peelers” as they do protestant Loyalists. We watched as Grace Ellis (Siân Brooke), Annie Conlon (Katherine Devlin) and Tommy Foster (Nathan Braniff) learned the ropes in one of the most dangerous cities to be a cop in Europe.

Season 2 expanded into West Belfast and its Loyalist communities, paramilitary groups and introduced us and our favorite police squad to all new political tensions.

In Season 3, we don’t exactly leave these groups behind – familiar faces from both seasons show up throughout the new season – but we do explore a new criminal element: the upper middle class. While both the first two seasons dealt primarily with working class people, the PSNI tackles a slightly more posh set of criminals in Season 3, though the lines are ever blurry.

‘Blue Lights’ Season 3 Tackles Upper Class Crime

When a young man released from police custody turns up dead, it becomes clear that foul play is involved. They begin searching for the girl he was seen with, worried that she’ll be the next victim of a nefarious drug ring both the local police and intelligence services are working against. Police soon find connections to some of the criminals at the upscale private members club, The Daenery, run by the mysterious Dana Morgan (Cathy Tyson).

As this investigation continues, personal conflicts bubble up across the department. By the end of Season 2, some workplace romances had formed. Tommy and Aisling (Dearbháile McKinney) are an item when Season 3 begins, with the pair living in a flat with Annie. Grace and Stevie (Martin McCann) have also finally made their budding romance official, though Stevie has left patrol behind and taken a promotion as Acting Sergeant. Both these relationships are put to the test.

Personal Conflicts Reflect a Maturing Cast

Aisling grows increasingly erratic after she and Annie arrive at the scene of a gruesome car accident. The trauma of the incident affects her in ways that she’s incapable of coping with on her own, and soon Tommy has to make a tough choice: stand beside her as she makes risky, emotionally driven choices or report her actions to the higher-ups.

Meanwhile, Grace’s investigation into the troubled teen girl, Lindsay (Aoife Hughes) brings up her own past as social worker, and she’s forced to confront her own painful memories from her childhood in state care. This leads to a pretty intense argument with Stevie, and perhaps the one storyline from Season 3 that I really disliked, simply because Stevie’s reaction to Grace’s past felt out of character and overly harsh. This show has always leaned on really organic chemistry and conflict between its main characters, and the Stevie/Grace conflict felt weirdly out of place and forced. It made me like each of these characters less for different reasons, whereas both Tommy and Aisling were made more sympathetic.

Tommy and Shane (Frank Blake) also butt heads after Shane plays fast and loose with due process and brings an internal investigation down on both their heads. Fortunately, outside of the Stevie/Grace conflict, Blue Lights Season 3 maintains a clear grasp on what makes this series work so well: actual police work, whether that’s investigating or responding to crimes, or the kind of quieter, day-to-day police work that makes this show so human.

‘Blue Lights’ Is At Its Best When It Focuses On The Small Things

This is best reflected in a scene in which Tommy and Sandra (Andi Osho) find an elderly man, Raymond (Gary Lilburn) who appears to be lost. They call it in and find out that he’s been reported missing. On the way to his daughter’s house, they listen to Kris Kristofferson, one of Gerry’s favorite musicians. Gerry (Richard Dormer), who was gunned down at the end of Season 1, was Tommy’s mentor and Sandra’s husband.

They don’t take Raymie’s claims that Kristofferson was “a mate” of his seriously until they show up at his daughter’s house and see pictures of the two together. Raymond picks up a guitar and plays Kristofferson’s “Help Me Make it Through the Night” in a really beautiful moment that has Sandra in tears and Tommy lost deep in thought. He – and the other new recruits – are all facing burnout as the realities of the job settle in. “Promise me you’ll never quit,” Sandra tells him after. It’s these smaller, quieter, deeply human moments that really make Blue Lights something special.

‘Blue Lights’ Season 3 Is Just the Beginning

The third season of Blue Lights deftly weaves these moments into the overarching criminal investigation. There are bad drugs floating around Belfast and what appears to be a sex-trafficking ring operating here and in Dublin. Helen McNally (Joanne Crawford) finds herself caught up in an even deeper level of the investigation, brought into a classified operation by C3 Intelligence officer, Paul “Colly” Collins (Michael Smiley). The criminal organization operating in Belfast, we discover, is part of something much larger.

Two incredibly intense scenes round out the end of the season, including one encounter at a restaurant that leaves Shane bleeding out while Annie fights desperately to save his life, and a tense car chase through the streets of Belfast that almost results in the killing of an officer and a key witness. Both these moments will have you on the edge of your seat.

Unlike the first two seasons of Blue Lights, Season 3 doesn’t really end definitively. It’s clear that the fourth season will be a continuation of Season 3’s storyline, with some important figures from Season 1 and 2 taking on more prominent roles (I won’t spoil who since we’re still an episode away from the end).

After winning the BAFTA for best drama series, the BBC renewed Blue Lights through Season 4, giving creators Declan Lawn and Adam Patterson the ability to take a long-view approach to the story. Season 3 doesn’t exactly end on a cliffhanger, but it clearly sets the stage for what’s to come in Season 4.

How Season 3 Compares to ‘Blue Lights’ Season 1 and 2

Season 1 remains the best of the three, with Season 2 a close second. While Season 3 continues with everything I loved about this show in its first two seasons, I’m hoping that we get a bit less of the relationship drama and a bit more of the gritty, on-the-street police work that really makes this show tick in Season 4.

I understand that in order to let characters grow and change, we need these relationships to be tested, but I genuinely think Blue Lights is at its best when our heroes are out on the street dealing with the citizens of Belfast – criminal or otherwise – making tough calls, showing deep compassion and empathy, and dealing with the consequences of their actions and the actions of others. Straying too far into personal drama and romantic conflicts risks taking away precious time from more interesting storylines. This is especially true in the Grace/Stevie conflict that really felt out of place in an otherwise strong season. Hopefully Season 4 course corrects. We only get six episodes per season, after all.

I’d also like to see more new recruits added to the series, so that we can give characters like Grace a chance to take probationary officers under her wing. Grace’s savior complex can only play out so many times, but she’d be a natural leader and trainer of new recruits. Other than these issues, Season 3 was another great entry in one of the best police dramas currently streaming and I can’t wait for Season 4.

Blue Lights’ Season 3 finale drops on BritBox next Thursday, December 18. If you haven’t started this series yet, please give it a shot. It’s one of my favorite UK crime shows at the moment, and a genuinely top-notch police drama. Fans of Happy Valley, The Wire and Line of Duty will find a lot to love here.

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