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We spoke to writers and  about their experience in the writers' room and writing their own episodes of the new series of the Belfast-set police drama, Blue Lights.

Watch Blue Lights on 主播大秀 iPlayer and 主播大秀 One from Monday 15th April

Can you outline your writing career to date?

Bronágh: I started out as an actor and still am an actor, that was my gateway into writing. I moved from Belfast to London for acting and then when I was over there, I decided to enter the writing competition and ended up getting selected for that. When you’re selected you get to do a performance piece and industry people come along. Luckily 主播大秀 Northern Ireland were over for it, and they were putting together a team for a new show called 6 Degrees. That led to me going onto the writing team. It started from there really. After that I wrote on lots of C主播大秀 and other children's dramas before I made the leap into more grown-up drama. The two areas work exactly the same, it’s just for a different audience. That experience gave me so much, I got to write so many scripts. I think that’s the only way to really polish your skills – by writing as much as possible.

Noel: My journey into writing is a bit random in that my previous career was as a police officer. I’ve always loved storytelling, but I was just writing for myself, almost as self-care, it was cathartic. I never imagined that anyone else would ever read it. Then it came to the stage that I had a finished script and I wondered if it was any good. The only person who I knew in the industry was (one of the creators of Blue Lights). He agreed to read the script and reacted to it really positively. That gave me the confidence to take it out, so I contacted who gave me the name of local producers. I contacted who agreed to read it and took it into development and then out to broadcasters. It was literally the first thing that I’d ever written, which was just crazy! From that I ended up getting an agent. The script was taken to the 主播大秀 and (who was commissioner there at the time) said “we love this, but we’ve committed to a cop show in Northern Ireland already” which turned out to be Blue Lights! That’s something which happens a lot – there will be something else similar on the development slate. I was disappointed at the time but now I’m pleased that’s the way it worked out.

Have you been involved with any of the writer development groups or opportunities offered by 主播大秀 Writers?

Bronágh: I’ve done development residentials in the past when you were known as 主播大秀 Writersroom. I remember one of them was when I was writing for a teenage audience. I’d just had a baby and remember it was bliss because I actually got some sleep! It was great just to be mingling with other writers and it did lead onto some work.

Noel: I was on the 主播大秀 Writers Pilot scheme. It was genuinely brilliant, the best scheme that I’ve done. I got teamed up with a mentor called , this legendary showrunner who also has a foothold in America. It was meant to be a professional mentor scheme but she’s just my mate now. We’re chatting all the time and the advice that she’s given me is unbelievable. She’s put me forward for jobs which have come off. The actual group of writers who were involved in Pilot and being part of that peer group was also great. It’s just lovely being in a group chat and being able to run things past each other. I’m not from the industry, outside of work I’m not involved with people from the industry, so forming that friendship group and being able to ask questions is just so helpful.

How did you become involved with Blue Lights?

Bronágh: I was already working with the production company, , when the first series was happening. , the joint CEO there, gave me my first writing job on 6 Degrees. I was very pregnant when the first series came around and couldn’t also swing getting into the writers’ room, but they said “if it comes back we’ll give you a shout”. I met Dec (Declan Lawn) and he read a spec’ script of mine. Then I was asked into the writers’ room for series 2 with the showrunners Dec, and Noel.

Noel: For me, because Dec had read my police script and I had that USP of having actually done the job, I was brought on board when series 1 was commissioned. I was involved in creating most of the characters and using my experience in shaping the storylines.

Why do you think the show has resonated with so many people?

Bronágh: I think it’s because it very, very cleanly explained aspects of Northern Ireland that people could never get their heads around. I lived in London for 10 years and people were always asking me to explain Northern Ireland, explain Belfast, to explain certain political aspects. People are fascinated by it and there’s only so much you can try and explain when you’re working in a coffee shop to your co-workers who are from Madrid or the north in England. Blue Lights came out and I think people just went "Oh I understand it more now – the layout of the city, the different communities, the trust issues, the differences in the police service". That’s a really hard thing to achieve.

Noel: Blue Lights was character-driven from the start. I remember from day one of the writers’ room that was the plan. On the surface it’s about the police but really, you’re getting to know the characters because they’re thrown into these incredible situations. How they deal with those situations tells you so much about who they are. I think through the fact it’s a police drama you get to know them very quickly and their personality traits – you really get behind them.

For me the best thing about Blue Lights is that it’s unashamedly localised. I think people buy into that. My favourite TV shows are ones that are totally of the place and don’t apologise for it in any way, shape, or form.

How does the writers’ room process work?

Bronágh: Dec and Adam come in with a very clear view of what the overall arc is going to be – the crime story which is always the driving force. That’s not to say that it doesn’t morph and change as time goes on. Within that overall arc we’re free to feed in in terms of guest stories that will come in and out and we do a lot of talking, breaking down our main family of characters and what we’re going to do with them.

At the end of the writers’ room process what do you leave with?

Bronágh: A document, photographs of scribbles on whiteboards, sheets going down the walls! our script editor writes everything up at the end of every day and streamlines it for us. As you can imagine, we’ll be on one episode and then the conversation jumps down the line to another. Sarah has the job of trying to put it all into order so that when we’re reading it over afterwards it’s more organised. I still don’t know how she does that! You leave with a sense of what each episode is – I know this because we walked out with a sense of episodes 1, 2 ,4, 5 and 6 but not so much episode 3 – and I was like ‘great that’s my episode!’ but that was just because we hadn’t cracked it yet in the room, but we cracked it later.

How does it work writing your own episode within the series?

Bronágh: You have an idea of the overall arc of the series, something will stand out with every episode, so you know what that episode is. Your A storyline – in terms of what incident your characters are called out to on the streets in that episode (for example) is still up for grabs and you get to bring that to the table and decide what you would like to do with the main characters within your episode – while keeping an eye on how it falls in the whole thing. That bit is really satisfying.

Noel: We knew from the beginning that Adam and Dec would write the beginning and end of the series, so we knew that episodes 3 and 4 were up for grabs. There’s a big storyline for which the crescendo happens in episode 4. That storyline was inspired by my real-life experience, so I agreed with Bronágh that I’d take episode 4. But before this point all four of us together with the producers had come up with the entire series and knew pretty much what was going to fall into each episode. Once the writers’ room stage is finished it’s about Bronágh and me going off and writing our outlines of what our individual episode are going to look like. Then after that we’ll all work on it together, agreeing and moving stuff around. The script editors are also involved at this stage. Once we get the sign off then it’s off to write the full script.

What are you most proud of about your episode?

Noel: For series 2 I campaigned to have a character who is a cop who’s a bit of a rascal and we’ve got him in a new character called Shane (Frank Blake). I’m proud that in the first draft of my episode, how I’d written him resulted in him being re-written in earlier episodes to get him to that point. Without giving any spoilers there’s a scene that I refer to as the Harry Potter scene – that’s where Shane comes to the fore – that’s what I’m most proud of.

Bronágh: In my episode I got to pitch a big emotional storyline. Everybody calls it the ‘tearjerker’. I got to write for Stevie (Martin McCann), who I just love as a character, and I got to delve deeper with him and into his past – through the job and his relationship with Grace (Sian Brooke). I think it takes things in a slightly different direction.

Why do you think people should watch Blue Lights?

Bronágh: I think it does that thing where it swings a lens onto another area of Belfast – which is such a complicated city. The show is doing this amazing thing of taking an aspect of the city and trying to interrogate it a bit. As Adam and Dec interrogate it the audience get to learn about the inner workings of this place. It can still baffle you – as it still baffles a lot of us who live here, but I think they’re just going deeper and deeper and through this world of policing you get to see so many other walks of life in Northern Ireland. Adam and Dec are journalists, and they know how to do this stuff. It feels great to be in the hands of people who are really good at that.

What’s the best piece of career advice that you’ve been given about writing?

Noel: I did a writing course with and he gave out his top ten tips. Number one was ‘Don’t be an a***hole’ – and I’ve never had any other piece of advice which has surpassed that! Because it’s all about relationships. If people enjoy working with you they are going to come back to work with you again.

Bronágh: For me the best piece was from . She said, ‘Just get it done’. I’d written a first draft and brought it to her with all the typical insecure writer caveats of ‘it’s really rubbish, it’s really bad, I could do another draft etc etc’ and she just took it from me and said, ‘You got it done. That’s the difference between people who want to write and people who write. We can’t collaborate with anyone unless you have something. We can talk all day about ideas (and a lot of the job is doing just that), but at the end of the day we’re going to need a script.’

As soon as you have a script you’ve something to work from, something to polish and to improve. Just get it done!

Watch Blue Lights Series 2 on 主播大秀 One and 主播大秀 iPlayer from Monday 15th April