Episode 39

Blue Lights is a gritty emotional cop prodcedural set in the tough streets of Belfast where entrenched gangs have plagued the city for decades. 

Even more complicated is the fact that many of the cops or their familes have grown up alongside the very lethal gang members they encounter. 

Over 3 seasons we follow three probationary officers with their own  raw emotional backstorys as they try to keep the peace in an increasingly complicated web of violence, gangs and even white collar crime. Grace is former social worker, and mother to a teenage son. Tommy, a bright idealistic young man and the tough but tender Annie is a great cop but one with a the occasional out of control temper. 

Setting it in Belfast provides a rich layer to the series as it intermingles politics, crime and the never-ending old conflicts in Ireland. 

RIOT WOMEN  focuses on five very different women in West Yorkshire. Professional women with families,  they’re all now over 50, menopausal and alternately resigned and pissed off about the next chapter in their lives. One of them organizes the others, all very much amateur musicians, into a rock band to compete in a local talent contest. To everyone’s surprise,  the band provides not only a new future for all five but also acts as a catalyst in the lives of each while taking on the normally taboo subjects of menopause, sex, female rage, ageism and “being on the wrong side of 50. “ Each has emotionally raw and realistic back story including that of the band’s lead singer who is a musical powerhouse but is plagued by demons from her abusive complicated past. The women’s relationships to each other are slow in developing but ring true. “Riot Women” is both outrageous and thoughtful. 

YOUNG SHERLOCK

This is an imagining of what Sherlock must have been like as a brilliant audacious young man just beginning to hone his skills at detection and deduction. Brash, at lose ends and getting into trouble, Sherlock is relegated to a porter position at Oxford by his brother Mycroft who hopes to reign in his reckless sibling. When valuable scrolls are stolen and  several professors are killed Sherlock is at first a suspect. But with the help of his new found friend James Moriarity who will later become his  nemesis, Sherlock uses all his wiles to uncover the mystery and in so doing unravels the mystery of his own family’s complicated and disturbing past.