'Blue Lights' Season 3 Trailer Brings Complications & Cupcakes

The 2020s will be remembered for many things. However, one small part of the entertainment landscape will probably end up overlooked: the sharp increase in murder mysteries and police procedural television in the Western world. From true crime to dramatic thrillers to cozy crime, these shows, referred to in the aggregate as "copaganda" because they paint law enforcement in a relentlessly positive light, are formulaic, didactic series in which law and order and the justice system work for the people, and fair outcomes are achievable for those who stick to their moral code.

The audience's increasing retreat into that fantasy over the last five years serves as a reminder of the human brain's need for a sense of societal order to feel secure. However, while most shows that fall into this category, from CSI and NCIS in the U.S. to the SOKO series in Germany, are clockwork-level predictable, at least one, Blue Lights, is less interested in heroism and more interested in the landscape where the police traditionally represented oppression, and how that attitude affects their jobs today.

Set in Belfast, the series focuses on three rookie cops, one of whom is old enough to remember the Troubles and two who have never known living with that sort of terrorism every day. All three believe in law enforcement and that the institution that was once the tool of the U.K. to suppress the IRA is good now. Whether or not that's true is questionable, but that's just one more reason why Blue Lights is worth your time. Copaganda, told from the perspectives of those unaware of the system's corruption, provides the audience with a glimpse into the reality behind the fiction that many police officers genuinely believe in.