Declan Lawn helps make the inexperienced Belfast officers of Blue Lights worth worrying about. We recommend its tense, humane drama, though the writing sometimes gives its recruits too much explaining to do.
Fi1m perspective
The inexperienced officers in Blue Lights (2023) are most convincing when they cannot quite put their doubts into words. The performances communicate uncertainty without needing to explain it. We worried about these recruits because the actors made their doubts persuasive. This is tense, humane television, and it gives us a clear reason to value Declan Lawn’s work: he helps make familiar police-drama situations matter through the people caught in them.
The films and programmes have largely developed through Lawn’s partnership with Adam Patterson. They wrote and directed the short Rough (2020), while The Salisbury Poisonings (2020) was their first major television writing commission. Their feature debut as directors, Rogue Agent (2022), preceded the creation of Blue Lights, for which Lawn also directed episodes of the second series. Within the partnership, Lawn concentrates more on words, Patterson on images and performances. It is worth keeping that shared authorship in mind before treating the series as a demonstration of one man’s directing.
Lawn’s background in investigative journalism helps explain the attention to professional and social detail. His research includes ride-alongs and interviews with serving and former officers, with an interest in the communities around the police as well as the institution itself. The rookie viewpoint in Blue Lights is a sensible way of letting us into that material without assuming prior knowledge. It also allows confusion to belong to the characters, rather than making it something the audience should feel embarrassed about.
The reservation is about dialogue. Lawn, Patterson and fellow writer Fran Harris sometimes ask a recruit to draw out information that seems intended chiefly for us, and being new does not make every question interesting. The performances are more convincing when doubt is allowed to remain unspoken, which suggests how little additional guidance the audience needs. There is enough tension and care here to outweigh those passages, and we would begin with Blue Lights. Give the officers time to stop explaining the job and get on with it.
Biography
Declan Lawn is a Northern Irish screenwriter, director and producer. He works in long-term partnership with Adam Patterson. Before entering scripted drama, he spent over a decade as an investigative journalist for BBC Panorama and BBC Spotlight.
Lawn co-created, wrote and executive-produced the BBC police drama Blue Lights (2023–), on which he has also directed episodes. His other credits include the feature Rogue Agent (2022), the mini-series The Salisbury Poisonings (2020) and The Undeclared War (2022), and the short film Rough (2020). He and Patterson have formed the production company Hot Sauce Pictures.
Lawn has received BAFTA recognition for his work.
