Blue Lights Season 3

Credit: BBC

The first trailer for Season 3 of the BBC’s outstanding police drama Blue Lights has dropped. The show is already out on the BBC in the UK and premieres on BritBox in the US this November.

Blue Lights follows the day-to-day police work of a group of “peelers” in Belfast as they come into contact with various members of the community ranging from hardened criminals to everyday citizens. It’s not a detective show or a mystery, but more akin to series like Southland, focusing on normal police though each season has a larger story often playing out behind the scenes.

Here’s the trailer:

Blue Lights stars Siân Brooke, Katherine Devlin, Martin McCann, Nathan Braniff, Frank Blake, Andi Osho, Joanne Crawford, Dearbháile McKinney among many others. Michael Smiley and Cathy Tyson join the cast for Season 3.

Season 1 introduced us to a handful of new recruits at the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI). We meet Grace (Brooke) a former social worker who partners up with Stephen (McCann) a mild-mannered officer with a penchant for finger foods. Tommy (Braniff) is a young recruit with eyes on a career as a detective, and Annie (Devlin) who is hot-headed but determined.

These and the rest of the cast grow enormously over the first two seasons as they find themselves patrolling areas of a city that was once in the throws of The Troubles. Both separatist (Catholic) neighborhoods and loyalist (Protestant) communities present their own obstacles, and the first two seasons deal with each of these in turn. Season 3 moves out of the poorer parts of Belfast and takes a look at the upper crust: Wealthier individuals and neighborhoods that face much less police scrutiny.

Blue Lights was created by Declan Lawn and Adam Patterson, debuting on the BBC on March 27, 2023. It won the BAFTA award for Best Drama Series earlier this year for its second season. Stay tuned for my review of Season 3. The show returns to BritBox on November 13th for another six episodes.