CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews Blue Lights: With all the coppers pairing off, this is like a soap version of Line of Duty
Blue Lights (BBC1)
House on fire? Just been burgled? Or perhaps you've tripped over the cat and broken your hip? Not to worry... there'll be an app for that.
Dialling 999 for the emergency services will soon be a thing of the past, if the Belfast police drama Blue Lights is any indicator. The Northern Ireland 'peelers', as its uniformed bobbies are known, seem obsessed with smartphone apps.
Back for a third series, the show saw its squad of diligent recruits chasing drug dealers and their customers — to seize not the Class-A contraband but their mobiles.
Plain-clothes intelligence officers are an ever-present bane for the ordinary police in this show.
They're constantly making grubby deals with organised criminal gangs, or instructing squad cars to stay out of 'Double-O B areas'. That's nothing to do with James Bond: the acronym stands for 'Out Of Bounds'.
This time, the undercover bods are desperate to obtain a drug-runner's handset 'with the encrypted messaging app still running'. They hope this will lead them back to Mr Big, a wolfish man called Fogerty (Charlie Maher).
Finding Fogerty ought to be easy. Just follow the trail of corpses. Not only does his '90 per cent pure' cocaine (available via his app, of course) tend to kill the customers, he also set about maintaining discipline in the ranks by pushing a careless dealer off the roof of a warehouse.
Belfast police drama Blue Lights is now back for its third season on BBC1. Pictured: Martin McCann as Stevie Neil (right) and Sian Brooke plays Grace Ellis (left)
The show saw its squad of diligent recruits chasing drug dealers and their customers — to seize not the Class-A contraband but their mobiles
'I want to show you something,' he purred, gesturing to the nighttime lights of the cityscape, with his arm across his victim's shoulders, like the devil with a kingdom to offer. 'It's beautiful in its own way, isn't it?' And then he gave the lad a shove.
The unlucky teenager landed barely a yard from Blue Lights heroine Grace (Sian Brooke) and her patrol car partner, Stevie (Martin McCann).
Since sharing a kiss at the end of the last series, Grace and Stevie are now officially a Loved-Up Item. They spend most of their working day scrolling through estate agents' ads (on yet another app) and scoffing cupcakes, baked by Stevie. But even with these distractions, they couldn't help noticing a plummeting body.
Stevie is uncomfortably aware that Blue Lights is turning into a soap opera version of Line Of Duty. Four of their colleagues have also paired off. 'The section is like a flipping dating show,' he fretted.
He's not wrong. All these romances are starting to give me what Love Island calls 'the ick'.
Meanwhile, two of the peelers, Shane and Tommy (Frank Blake and Nathan Braniff), responded to a call for paramedics at a private club, where a dodgy accountant was suffering a cocaine-induced heart attack.
Despite having no medical equipment, our brave duo swept into the club, elbowing disgruntled members out of the way.
'We ordered an ambulance,' protested one.
'It's not Deliveroo, mate,' snapped Shane. That's the problem with these apps — you never get exactly what you want.
