This precision-crafted Belfast police drama is a tense, thrilling watch that’s rich with detail. Has there ever been a more terrifying cliffhanger than it served up this season?

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There haven’t been many police dramas quite like Blue Lights. While it might feel as if you’re simply watching a superior spin on a generic format – the gritty, urban cop show – Declan Lawn and Adam Patterson’s Belfast-set thriller is actually an outlier. Paradoxically, police procedurals usually work as entertainment because the police defy the procedures. The rule-breaking maverick cop is among the sturdiest of all TV archetypes. Blue Lights is the opposite. It works so brilliantly because it’s a stickler for the rules. It has to be.

Rule-breaking mavericks generally come a cropper in Blue Lights. Shane (Frank Blake) nearly loses his career because of some shady evidence-gathering via a mobile phone. When Aisling (Dearbháile McKinney) pays an after-hours visit to a domestic violence suspect, catches him abusing his wife and arrests him, she doesn’t get a pat on the back; she is suspended for behaving like a vigilante.