Last week’s season opener of Blue Lights laid the tables – our once-rookie recruits became hardened after the death of Gerry Cliff at the end of series one but gulped hard when a spate of drug deaths across the city pointed to a feud between two rival gangs.
Now, in this second episode, things started to move quickly, thanks to a series of brilliantly staged setpieces and some intriguing power-play moves.
The one thing that Gerry’s death has done to viewers at home is to really put them on the edge of their seats pretty much all the time. So when Annie and new recruit Shane flirt outrageously and have a great time doing so, your brain is thinking, ‘Oh god don’t build them up, they’re both going to die’. And, similarly, when Stevie and Grace’s relationship takes more twists and turns, you think the same.
And we get a few moments in this second episode when more deaths among the team could well have occurred, not least a very tense fire rescue scene right at the beginning, which saw Shane and Annie steam into a burning building (it was kingpin Jim ‘Dixie’ Dixon’s place) to save its inhabitants without back-up from the fire service.
And then at the end – as part of usurper Lee Thompson’s master plan to take control and curry favour with Tina – he instigates an unauthorised march through the Mount Eden area, designed to ignite a full-on Loyalist feud with Hamill to the death. And, most assuredly, by the episode’s end death did indeed happen and Lee is now the king of the castle.
Because of the unit’s shock at the turn of events, its lack of resources was exposed yet again. So they brought back Jonty, who has contacts in Mount Eden and, much to his chagrin, is asked to come back and help. Elsewhere, Jen starts to investigate the bombing that ruined Happy’s life all those years ago.
It really was a cracking episode, with plenty of action and intrigue, and the pace of it was just terrific. You could say that series two is now well and truly up and running.
Paul Hirons
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Blue Lights is shown in the UK on BBC One and BBC iPlayer
The Killing Times 
Nit: it’s “spate”.
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