Katherine Devlin

Devlin’s Annie Conlon can be in uniform and still look new to the job. In Blue Lights (2023), her posture conveys the physical weight of frontline policing, while she keeps this Belfast rookie’s uncertainty in view. We worried about Annie because Devlin makes her lack of experience feel like a problem she has to keep facing. It is persuasive acting in a tense, humane police drama, and it gives familiar situations enough weight to make us care about what happens.

Small roles as Siobhan in The Dig (2019) and Natasha in Vikings (2020) preceded Blue Lights, her first major part. A guest appearance as Emma Stoke in The Day of the Jackal (2024) followed, but Annie remains the substantial reason for our interest. Devlin uses the larger part to make inexperience persist, rather than treating it as something to establish quickly and discard once the plot needs an efficient police officer.

Annie also has personal trauma to contend with alongside the professional demands, giving Devlin more to do than demonstrate the difficulties of learning procedures. She is well matched with Nathan Braniff’s Tommy Foster and Siân Brooke’s Grace Ellis, whose performances also leave room for the uncertainty of the job. Devlin and Braniff are especially good at keeping vulnerability visible without asking for sympathy. The ensemble works because competence still has to be learnt; none of these beginners comes conveniently equipped with it.

Our reservation concerns the programme’s tendency to make its explanations conspicuous through the rookies. There are limits to how naturally an actor can carry information being supplied for our benefit, and the writing sometimes makes that task too obvious. Devlin’s believable inexperience helps, though the performance cannot entirely disguise why we are being told something. Start with Blue Lights, and give the other two beginners your attention too.