News

The Day of the Jackal is off to a strong start on Peacock. The new series starring Eddie Redmayne and Lashana Lynch premiered on Thursday, Nov. 14.

If you like shows about assassins, this is definitely the show for you to watch right now. For those who don’t know, the series is based on the book of the same name by Frederick Forsyth.

We shared all the big moments moments in The Day of the Jackal episode 1 to make sure you didn’t miss anything!

The Jackal assassinates Manfred Fest

In Munich, Germany, an assassin kills Ralf, a custodian at a media building, and steals Ralf’s identity. Everything seems to be going okay on the assassin’s mission until an unsuspecting worker walks in on him attaching his silencer. He kills her, but the security guard hears. The assassin shoots everyone on the floor and chases the mark down the stairwell.

As we are now officially in June, BritBox has announced their slate of new programming arriving this month. From beloved, returning police dramas to new series premiering for the first time. We have the complete list and have selected three of the most exciting titles landing on the service during the month.

In the United States, BritBox has just one subscription price. American Anglophiles can sign up for the service for just $8.99 per month. Not only will they have access to all of the new titles every month, but they will also get an incredible library of iconic series like, “Sherlock,” “Luther,” “Vera,” “Father Brown,” “Death in Paradise,” and more.

7-Day Free Trial $8.99+ / month BritBox.com What are the 3 Best Shows, Movies, and Specials Coming to BritBox in June 2024? “Changing Ends” | Thursday, June 6

Chatty Man himself Alan Carr stars in the semi-autobiographical sitcom that focuses on the comedian’s upbringing...

Today, BritBox, the premiere streaming destination for British television offering the biggest and best collection of unmissable British television, announced a dynamic slate of upcoming Original series.

Sharing a suspenseful teaser, BritBox announced that the thrilling new mystery Passenger, led by Wunmi Mosaku (Loki), will premiere in October. In the captivating screenwriting debut of actor Andrew Buchan (Broadchurch), inexplicable crimes haunt the fictional village of Chadder Vale, where perhaps more is afoot than meets the eye.

Barry Sloane (Revenge), David Threlfall (Shameless), and Rowan Robinson (A Haunting in Venice) also star in the atmospheric crime drama.

Summer will see the powerful return of gritty, impactful crime dramas, starting with the June 13 return of Blue Lights. A breakout hit in the UK, the Belfast-based series delves into complex local politics through the lens of a police drama.

Multi-bafta-nominated The Responder returns July 11 for a new season, once again led by Martin Freeman...

Warning: spoilers for Blue Lights series 2.

The message in the Blue Lights series two finale could hardly seem clearer. After six episodes of being assaulted, petrol bombed and shot at on their turbulent Belfast patch, police officers Grace and Stevie finally give in to their feelings and drive off into the night while Dolly Parton’s “Light of a Clear Blue Morning” perkily assures us that “Everything’s gonna be alright/It’s gonna be okay.”

Phew. Thank heavens! If there’s one thing Siân Brooke’s Grace and Martin McCann’s Stevie deserve in Blue Lights, it’s for everything to be alright and okay. He’s a widower who nursed his beloved wife through cancer; she’s a former social worker and single parent whose only son has moved away, and they both do a job so stressful it’s a wonder that they don’t spontaneously burst...

The cast and crew of Belfast-set police drama Blue Lights had less than a month of filming left on their second series in 2023 when they found out that their show had been renewed for a third and a fourth run.

“We were three or four weeks off the end of shooting season two when we got the news,” actor Siân Brooke tells Den of Geek. “I was so pleasantly surprised because it doesn’t really happen very much in this day and age, to have somebody support you and nail their colours to the mast the way that they have, it means a lot that they’re behind us.”

Blue Lights follows the progress of Brooke’s character Grace, with Annie (Katherine Devlin) and Tommy (Nathan Braniff), three new recruits to the Police Service of Northern Ireland. Grace is a former social worker, Annie’s a young local and Tommy...

Whether due to spoiler phobia, poor impulse control, or an unquenchable need to know what treat Stevie will be serving next out of his magic lunchbox, some Blue Lights fans have already binge-watched all six episodes of series two. To those people we say, breathe out. More is coming.

Two months before series two arrived on BBC One and iPlayer, the corporation confirmed that it had ordered two further series of Declan Lawn and Adam Patterson’s Belfast-set police drama. Like the first two, series three and four will each have the regulation six-episodes, and if all goes to plan, we might reasonably expect them to air respectively in spring 2025 and spring 2026.

Series one arrived to acclaim last March and quickly bagsied itself high-ranking spots on ‘The Best TV of 2023’ round-ups come the end of the year. It’s the story of three rookie recruits to the Police Service of...

Warning: contains spoilers for the Blue Lights series one finale.

When Blue Lights arrived in 2023, it felt like counter-programming to the news headlines. Real life was filled with reports of police corruption, brutality and deadly crimes committed under cover of the uniform, and here was this drama, offering an alternative.

Grace, Tommy and Annie were that alternative. New recruits to the Police Service of Northern Ireland, they weren’t in uniform to abuse power or take greasy backhanders, they were there to help, and they had the courage of their convictions.

That isn’t to say their courage and convictions weren’t sorely tested by the reality of the job. As they discovered, policing a community riven by historical conflict is tough enough without MI5 doing deals with local kingpins that keep the drugs and crime flowing. Not to mention anonymous death threats and the violent loss of beloved colleagues.

The BBC has released the trailer for series two of the hit Belfast-based police drama ‘Blue Lights.’

Co-created and written by Declan Lawn and Adam Patterson and produced by Two Cities Television, Blue Lights is an authentic, gripping and darkly funny drama about ordinary people doing an extraordinary job.

Series one, which aired in March last year, followed three new Psni probationary recruits as they navigated their way through their first few months in a uniquely complex place to be a response police officer. It was recently commissioned for two more series.

Reprising their roles in the forthcoming second series are Siân Brooke (Grace Ellis), Martin McCann (Stevie Neil), Katherine Devlin (Annie Conlon), Nathan Braniff (Tommy Foster), Joanne Crawford (Helen McNally), Andi Osho (Sandra Cliff), and Hannah McClean (Jen Robinson).

Also set to return are Paddy Jenkins (Happy Kelly), Desmond Eastwood (Murray Canning), Jonathan Harden (Jonty) and Andrea Irvine (Nicola Robinson...

The BBC has tasked His Dark Materials writer Jack Thorne to pen a TV adaptation of William Golding’s seminal novel Lord of the Flies.

This marks the first time the novel will be made for television, though there have been two feature film adaptations — the first Peter Brook’s 1963 movie and the second made in 1990 by Harry Hook (above).

Sex Education producer Eleven is attached to make The BBC’s series, which was unveiled by BBC Chief Content Officer Charlotte Moore today at a Broadcasting Press Guild event in London. Several other announcements were also made (see below).

Writer Thorne is known for shows such as BBC fantasy series His Dark Materials, Channel 4 Covid-19 drama Help, Shane Meadows’ This is England and Netflix series The Eddy, feature films Wonder and Enola Holmes and theater productions including Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

Golding’s 1954 novel tells the story...

Mip TV is just around the corner and, as ever, the content will be king. Here, Deadline walks you through seven of the buzziest dramas set for the Croisette, featuring police thrillers, a Royal Family docu-drama and Beta Film’s latest about the Ms Estonia shipwreck. Read on for the best-in-class projects heading to Cannes for the April 17-19 confab.

Blue Lights

Distributor: BBC Studios

Network: BBC One

Episodes: 6 x 60

Having just launched on BBC One primetime, Blue Lights is the latest precinct drama from Declan Lawn and Adam Patterson, the creators of the critically-acclaimed Salisbury Poisonings. In Gallagher Films/Two Cities Productions’ show, the pair, who worked for years as investigative journalists, turn their hands to the troubled situation in Belfast, a uniquely dangerous place to be a Police Officer. Grace (Siân Brooke), a mother of a teenage boy, has made the decision in her 40s to leave her...

Crime dramas are rarely revolutionary – we often watch them because they’re comfortingly formulaic – but every so often you get a gem that changes the game. We saw it with Line of Duty, Happy Valley, and Luther – and now Blue Lights is here to make you sit up, stop scrolling and get invested.

What the detectives from the above shows all have in common is experience, but Blue Lights focusses on three fresh-faced officers on probation in Belfast, Northern Ireland’s most dangerous city. Annie (Katherine Devlin) is scrappy and impetuous, Tommy (Nathan Braniff) is bookish and a terrible shot, and Grace (played by Trying’s Sian Brooke) is naively optimistic about making a difference despite having joined the force in her forties after a career as a social worker.

The good news is that what they lack in policing potential, they make up for in instant likeability, and this...

It seems unkind to mark down any drama that tries to find its way through the continuing tensions in Northern Ireland, but the problem with BBC One’s Blue Lights is that there’s no one to really root for. All the characters in the story are either loathsome or pathetic, with some a mix of both. It does tend to mirror the politics in the province in recent times, incidentally, but that’s not really the point.

Blue Lights is the story of three probationary officers in the Police Service of Northern Ireland (Psni), Grace Ellis, Annie Conlon and Tommy Foster, played with a kind of uncharming naivety by Sian Brooke, Katherine Devlin and Nathan Braniff, respectively. They spend much of their time getting stoned (not in the nice way) and being derided and mocked by their colleagues, who seem to resent the idea that anyone would actually want...

Series

U.K. broadcaster BBC has acquired CNN‘s Primetime Emmy winning series “Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy.” The six-part series follows Oscar nominee Stanley Tucci as he travels across Italy to discover the secrets and delights of the country’s regional cuisines. In each episode, Tucci visits a different region or city of Italy, showing viewers how the diversity of Italian cooking offers a gateway through which they can glimpse Italy’s history and culture.

The show, which is produced by CNN and London-based film and television production company Raw, has already been renewed for a second season and will be available on BBC Two and streamer iPlayer from Feb. 27.

Tucci said: “It has been a dream of mine to make this show for many years and a great joy to make it with CNN and Raw. I am so honored that it has been acquired by the esteemed BBC.

Exclusive: Sherlock and Good Omens star Siân Brooke is to lead BBC One police thriller Blue Lights from the creators of The Salisbury Poisonings, with filming kicking off in Belfast.

Brooke will play Grace and be joined by The Dig’s Katherine Devlin and newcomer Nathan Braniff as three rookie police officers in the Northern Irish capital, with Grace making the decision in her 40s to leave her steady job and join the force. Just a few weeks into her role, she’s making so many mistakes that her decision no longer looks like a winning bet.

Brooke is best known for playing Sherlock Holmes’ evil sister Eurus in the final ever episode of the BBC’s Sherlock and she has also featured in Good Omens, Doctor Foster and as disgraced Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick in ITV’s Stephen.

Joining Brooke in Blue Lights are Game of Thrones’ Richard Dormer...