'Task' to 'Blue Lights': Gritty TV This Week

Hello, everyone.

Thanks for tuning in.

It's taking it down.

The Alabama Takes podcast for TV and streaming.

There's a lot of TV out there.

Some of it can be a waste.

So every Tuesday, we tell you spoiler free, if a show's worth your time, who might want to watch it.

And then after a break, we take it down.

We break it down, we discuss it, analyze it, helps test your theory, your thoughts on the show, gives you some conversation.

This week, we're prepping for the new HBO drama task, and we're also going to be talking about some of season two of Blue Lights, which is also on HBO Max from BritBox.

We'll be talking up through the fourth episode in the spoiler section.

So let's get Adam and Donovan in here and give us some talk.

An Alabama take projection.

Here they are.

It's Adam.

It's Donovan.

It's me with them.

We record on Sunday, release on Tuesday, and this may set us up once more to be behind the curve each week as tonight begins the new HBO crime drama task.

Is this going to pull us out of the doldrums?

You think it's described as unrelentingly bleak?

Sign me up.

Yeah, I know.

Enough of this colorful summer fun.

Give me some of that.

Set in the working class suburbs of Philadelphia, An FBI agent heads up a task force to put an end to a string of violent robberies led by an unsuspecting family man.

What if it turns out that it's just a sting to catch Frank Reynolds?

Like, that's the twist at the end.

You just had to set a cage.

Exactly.

I've been enjoying alien Earth very much.

I don't know what you mean when you say doldrums.

I'm sorry.

Yeah, that was disrespectful.

It was disrespectful.

I mean, I've been.

I've been watching tons of television, but it's all sports.

So the task begins tonight.

I'm just thrilled for it.

It's Mark Ruffalo, Tom Pelfrey, like I said, described as unrelentingly bleak.

Tell me more.

I'm.

I'm.

It's created by Brad Inglesby, who's the same creator and showrunner for mayor of Easttown.

I thought that was just a great show.

Loved Mare of Easttown.

I'm interested how this is gonna go because Mare was certainly dark, but I don't think it was bleak.

It had a bleak moment or two.

It did.

But I think kind of the overall.

Overall arc, it wasn't Necessarily bleak.

Yeah.

There's some.

Some forward progress by people.

Yes.

There was Another aspect of TAs that I had forgotten, and I can't seem to find it in any description, but I. I may be wrong, but I think Mark Ruffalo is the task force leader, but I think he initially started out as a philosophy professor or something before the FBI.

There's just something like, double sign me up.

Yeah, yeah.

There's just something else that's scratching a big itch for me here.

I'm just thinking, like, there's a character.

There's going to be a moment where there's two characters riding in the car and one character looks out the window, and without looking at his partner, he says, God is dead.

And the other guy, clutching the steering wheel, looking straight ahead, says, what else is new?

Yeah, yeah, this is what.

This is what we want.

Show writes itself.

That's what we want from our HBO dramas.

This is true.

This is very true.

So that's to say quite likely next Tuesday.

We'll be talking about the first episode, though some of you will have watched it when you hear us now, you know, like, setting it up.

I don't know.

There's something about hbo.

Does.

Does.

You know, semi bleak, kind of gritty, as good as anyone, especially on a Sunday night.

It's funny that gritty was used to describe Blue Lights, which I didn't find gritty enough to warrant that description, although I do like this show.

How many heroin overdoses does it take, Blaine?

It takes more than one?

Well, the others are implied.

I feel like our understanding, much like with the always sunny talk last week, our understanding of gritty and bleak, those pathways in our brain are just so blown out from the last 20 years of TV.

You know, prestige television shows up, and it's.

It's basically just like, oh, the doctor gave me a pill prescription, and now I'm, like, in a back alley with a syringe.

You know, like, it's just.

We've gone too far, you know, in.

In that back alley with Frank Reynolds.

So, yeah, things are tough.

It's just in the same way that it takes a lot to, like, shock or scare me anymore.

Yeah.

Although you're not a fan of horror.

No, I don't like a jump scare.

I don't like a jump scare either.

I'm right there with Adam.

I don't like that.

But the.

The idea of, like, shocking or bleak, it's got to be pretty extreme at this point.

This is what they warned me about.

I've been desensitized I will put a.

Plug right in here.

I thought I was pretty desensitized.

And there was a.

A bit on Alien Earth.

Not this most recent episode, but before with some eyeball stuff that I.

My eyes turned away from.

I don't like.

It was very good, but it was a sheep, which somehow made it even worse.

Like sheep.

Body horror.

I don't like body horror, but body horror amount, really.

So no Cronenberg, no the Fly, Nothing like that?

It's rough.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Interesting.

I can do some.

It depends on how it's done, but horror.

Yeah.

I'm four also.

Friendship is streaming on HBO Max, the Tim Robinson and Paul Rudd comedy drama.

I don't know.

I haven't seen it.

If I need a chaser after task, this is the way to go.

It might be.

I know little about the movie other than Tim Robinson's insane.

Yes.

But moving on, for this week's maybe next, we'll likely put a final bow on coverage of the series of Blue Lights started until.

Until series three.

Well, I was gonna say yes.

It started at Brit Box.

Now on HBO Max, a third and fourth season has been promised.

Oh, I didn't know about the fourth.

Will you to watch more of this?

Yeah.

Oh, yeah, I think I'm in.

But I'm so far behind you guys.

I don't know.

I mean, but I. I am sold on the show for sure.

Yeah.

With the two seasons that are done, completed or on HBO Max, the better than normal cop drama set in Northern Ireland aspects of the Wire happening a little made by former journalists Declan Long and Adam Peterson with Louise Gallagher.

We've, I think for.

We're kind of in the midpoint of season two, although I've finished it as a whole.

I guess on average, we're kind of in the midpoint of season two.

So you're in for more.

Right.

You'd say, well, I've had enough heroin overdoses, Blaine, to really enjoy myself.

Yeah, no, it's pretty.

I'm still liking it.

I feel like it hit.

One of the things I'm liking is it has hit the part of the series where.

And the Wire kind of did this, but they did a longer season where the implied question for us, the viewer, is, like, how are resources allocated?

Right.

Like, we're seeing a problem from lack of policing resources, but we're also seeing things from the police's point of view.

So there's bits where we're talking about, like, the drugs and everything that have gone into the estates.

And it's like we have one solution, but is that the solution?

I feel like that's the question that got asked really, really well in the Wire season, where they're focusing more on the middle school, how are the resources, and then, of course, the literal budget fight between the police and the schools.

This is more of a season two thing, but it's.

There's two or three ways of handling the situation.

And usually with cop dramas you get the one way and they go that direction.

If it's a simplified version or if it's a procedural where they have to solve it within the hour and then next week will be a new episode.

They have the one solution.

They go forth with that solution.

Here they're exploring, you know, there's a.

There's a good solution here, and it's the good moral way of looking at the problem, and then there's a more pragmatic way of looking at it, and it's not necessarily as morally good or legal.

Or legal.

Which.

Yes, I, I like how they're examining that.

They're.

It's funny that this year we've seen two police and police adjacent shows from the UK that are really doing this with blue Lights and then in a slightly different way, but also Adolescents, which has been really interested in using this as kind of a jumping off point for how do we explore these other tangles throughout our society.

I thought you were going to mention Department Q.

How they were doing.

That was good too.

This is a cop drama, except elevated.

This is a cop drama that's making you think a little more.

And, you know, the camera works a little better, their acting's a little better, the writing's a little elevated, and that's kind of what's going on with Blue Lights.

I think it made me think of adolescence just because there's an interest in interrogating, you know, like, okay, what are drugs doing to this place?

What do old tangled loyalty, you know, what do political divisions do to this place?

What's beneath the surface?

And I think Adolescents did a really great job of establishing that that's what they were looking for, going between the first episode and then the second, specifically going to his school.

And they're looking at how these things have spilled over into a public place like that.

I do mean public with a P, since it's taxpayer funded as well.

It's funny you mention adolescence.

Having not seen the ending of season two, the last two episodes made me think of adolescence and I wasn't going to make that comparison until next week.

So funny that you brought that up.

Yeah.

You're gonna think of it again.

We can recommend this show.

We have been recommending this show.

We've been covering it, talking about did season two did end last year.

It's not necessarily a new show, but seasons three and four are promised and I think three is supposed to drop between now and December at some point.

Some probably on Britbox.

So I might have to subscribe to Britbox to, to binge the six episodes and then do one of the things I've always heard people do and subscribe and then watch one show and then, you know, get off of the channel or streamer.

The old Netflix classic.

Right.

I'm, I said it last week.

I'm still amazed that they make me care pretty deeply about some characters that I only see 98% of the time at their job in uniform.

Yes, I agree too, Blaine.

I think that that's one thing that almost and obviously it's not a one to one comparison, but I think the Wire showed much more of the folks off the job, whereas we don't, we don't see as much.

And so I do think it's almost, it's an additional heavy lift to just show folks doing their jobs all the time and make you care about them.

Yeah, it's good dialogue writing when they do that.

I think it, yeah, it's a credit to, you know what they're saying on the job and you piece together their.

Their lives and all.

I think it does to kind of stem from what Adam identified as one of the big themes that we've kind of returned to, which is like, you know, who, who would do this job?

Right.

Like, we're interested in the kind of people who are doing this job for whatever reason.

And so I think that kind of the natural dialogue that, that, that supports that interest of the viewer really goes a long way.

So we're going to get into spoilers in a little bit.

We, we'll get into season two through four, episode four.

So we'll take a break, give you time to adjust, bail if you need, and come back later.

Foreign.

We'Re on this side of the episode of our podcast to talk only about Blue Lights season two through four.

What we'll do next week is pretty likely talk some Alien Earth spoilers, task episode one spoilers, and we'll wrap Blue Lights as well.

But here we're through season two, episode four.

Everything up to that point's up for grabs.

So with episode three in season two as pedestrian as he was as a character in season one, it's Great to see Jaunty back.

This is his.

All jaunty.

This is his moment.

He comes back, you know, it kind of low key.

Get the band back together.

It really was.

Yeah.

You know, he did no action on the streets.

Much more in the sheets last season.

But yeah, it was good.

You're like, oh yeah, that guy.

What's he up to?

Why not bring him on in at.

Least a familiar face.

Yeah.

It's nice to see in these troubling times.

Yeah.

So many of these characters have fates that are hinged upon moving up or having the opportunity to move up.

It's how Sergeant Canning has Shane wrapped around his finger.

You know, Shane has the possibility of moving up if he does what Canning wants him to do.

It could just leave him with the patrol cops.

A low person on the totem pole.

And they kind of dangle that in front of Tommy as well.

Although Tommy doesn't care about that as much.

Tommy's actually almost the complete opposite part.

I don't know exactly what this means, but we know that he has taken himself off of the fast track.

That's right.

To stick around in patrol and Response.

Yeah.

Which I'm presuming, Shane, that's not the case.

It doesn't seem like it's the case.

Does one?

In outsourcing personally with Annie and Shane, Tommy and his interest with the copy train with it once Grace and Steven.

Does that feel out of step for the show at this point or does it feel like a natural evolution of what season two should be doing?

Because we talked about getting to care about these characters so much, yet all we really ever see is that they're cops.

You know, we see an occasional.

I'm drinking coffee right before I go into work in season one.

Is this what you.

Is this a good idea for the show?

What you want from the show?

Do you want to see it going into more personal lives?

I'm completely.

I'm completely fine with this.

Especially for, for.

For.

It's a, Especially for.

For Grace and Stevie.

It's a pretty natural progression.

Yeah.

And I, And I do.

I, I don't.

I don't know if anything of this, but it is kind of interesting how all of the relationships are with fellow police officers.

Tommy's probably being the smartest since she doesn't work in his town.

Although she's come over to.

To, to lend a hand.

Yeah.

And so there's, There's.

I think that feels pretty deliberate to me.

Yeah.

We're going to see that.

There might be some.

There might be Some issues.

And it made me.

It made me think too, of like.

It kind of makes sense, though, right?

Like, when you're in that line of work and you accept those dangers, who do you.

Who do you.

Who do you.

Who do you run into that can keep up with you?

Right.

Yeah.

Who do you.

Who do you run into that lives.

That lives the same life.

That's right.

And keeping the cups in the uniforms continues to give us just really good chemistry between Grace and Stevie.

The way he looks at her.

It's really how all men should look at their girlfriends or wives, boyfriends.

Yearning.

Yeah, yearning.

But that actor who plays Stevie that I.

He's an Irish actor.

He balances friendly with loving very well.

Last mentioned you last week, you mentioned that some of this is the theme of cops trying to do what's right when the stakes are raised while the Maintaining some niceties, maintaining some human qualities.

Steven's gotten angry plenty of times, of course, but the actor conveys.

Trying to blend.

Trying to maintain.

I'm a cop, I'm trying to do cop things, but I'm also just trying to be as human about it as I can.

Every time we saw him really get into trouble in the show, it's either been over Grace related, which is very human, or really just trying to do the decent thing, you know, trying to help.

You know, trying to help a guy who we don't know it.

You know, like, we don't know.

And he doesn't know what happened to that guy's husband.

And he's not really in trouble, but just when we see it, he's wanting to.

Yeah.

Be decent, it seems.

Yeah.

And he plays it.

Nope.

Perfectly.

I like too.

I like too.

And this goes to the actor is he plays Stevie really well, is, like, kind of tired and he's seen a lot, but he is not.

He could so easily be cynical, but he's not.

Yet.

He's not cynical.

Yeah.

Speaking of getting the band back together, that smarmy lawyer's back this time he's Hamill's attorney.

It's like he's the only bad guy lawyer in town.

This is exactly one of the.

To compare it to the Wire.

Like, whenever the.

The.

The.

The one lawyer who, like, represents every single criminal in Baltimore shows up, you're like, oh, that slimy son of a.

This is gonna be good.

Lee Thompson becomes a major force in season two.

He meets with the Dubliner, I think is just about the only thing.

When we hear him called, he gains this guy's approval to run drugs or crime or everything.

Because he has a cab service now and, and he is taking out Dixon.

I don't know why, but like.

Or I don't know why in a way that I can express well.

But something about Lee being the antagonist I'm really liking.

Just maybe because he just seems like a bundle of contradictions.

He works so well as a antagonist in this season.

Does a good.

Does a really good job with that because he is, you're right, he's contradictory.

He's.

He's doing this for the community in his mind.

Yeah.

But at the same time, there's a crime element.

Of course, there's.

It's huge crime element.

You see, he's the, He's.

Well, it's, it's not up front, but you kind of wonder with his, with his background, you know, like, he's, he's served.

He's a veteran.

The reason his, his gang is so dangerous is because he's friends with other veterans who are very, very familiar.

Yeah.

With violence.

Yep.

And so, yeah, like you said, Blaine, it's like you're kind of like, this is the upstanding kind of king and country guy.

He's a loyalist.

Right.

He doesn't, he doesn't want Irish independence.

He's doing this for the neighborhood.

And yet, you know, at what point are you like.

But like flooding.

Flooding your neighborhoods with dangerous drugs doesn't usually make.

Doesn't usually make things better.

Right.

And, you know, he really does feel.

Yeah.

Kind of like a bundle of contradictions.

Like.

Yeah, there's some duty and honor part too, but he's completely willing to use his friend's funeral parade to bring a feud out to the open, to bring the police in, too.

So how, you know, how much is sincere and how much is cynical.

Yeah.

Or.

Yeah.

Or doing it intelligently as much as you can, you know, be a criminal and be intelligent.

His appearance at the meeting held by Johny reminds us too, the cops, due to laws and rules, they are handcuffed to do anything to help the working class.

So many times it's a power play for Lee to take charge there.

It's, you know, the cops can't do anything for you moment for him.

And it's that, that's an intelligent thing.

If you are going to be the local crime boss.

Yeah.

You want people, if you're the authority in the neighborhood, you want people who might know something to say, what have the police ever done for me?

But Lee paid for, you know, whatever.

He gave my brother £20 when he needed it.

Or, you know.

Yep.

Also, is there a hint here that Jonty is a loyalist?

Is that something we're supposed to know?

Man, I didn't pick up that he was having that affair with Jen, so don't ask me anything.

Like, Adam was right on that.

And don't ask me anything I don't know.

Yeah, you talked about that suspicious death of a husband.

It put a crack in how to view crime or when to call it a crime, between Grace and Steven.

And I would have expected them to take the opposite tack there, but no, that's when you remember that they use a character history.

Stephen has lost a wife.

Yes.

And it's keen writing, I think, to have Stephen and Grace deal with easing someone into death who can't avoid it, and the rest of the officers dealing with the fallout of a death that will lead to more death in the name of criminal capitalism.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

And I also just wanted to say I thought it was.

It's.

It's a nice detail.

To me, this is where the show is one of the better than normal cop dramas because they give Stephen this genteel soul and you recognize it through food.

Yeah.

He's always got a snack and.

And it's like something like a little fancy that he made himself, you know.

He did it.

Yes, he made it.

It's homemade.

Exactly.

Yes.

It's not like a Little Debbie or something.

Yeah.

At the end of this episode with the grieving husband, I think it questions, you know, the right of when to die, of euthanizing someone in pain.

It's as sad of an episode to see one man deal with it in real time and to reflect on that.

It's.

I would wonder how folks who fortunately have not dealt with this, but Stevie's understanding that at the beginning, you'd give him, Take, give anything to give him more life, and at the end, you do anything to make it stop.

That's pretty hard.

From removes that I have been at knowing people who have dealt with loved ones dealing with this, it.

It just seems incredibly brutal.

It is.

When's that line?

Exactly.

And you know it when you know it.

Not.

Not the same thing at all.

But, you know, we've all, I think maybe an even more familiar situation that is just like, for.

For us is like a pet.

Right.

Like, we think how hard that decision is for a pet.

Not really, but, like, you can kind of almost see your way into, like, the order of magnitude this would be.

And so it is really.

I love, like, what you said, Blaine, is that it ends up being Grace, who is extremely compassionate, who's like Stevie, A crime's a crime.

I have to call this in.

The law applies equally.

Whereas Stevie's been there.

And this is a theme of season two, I think a crime's a crime.

I gotta call it in.

Do you make exception to that?

Is it a better idea to make an exception?

The ideal, right, is that justice is blind.

It doesn't matter who you are.

It doesn't matter what you've done.

Now, obviously, we know in the real world it doesn't matter who you are or what you've done, or it does often matter who you are.

That's right.

But.

But there's almost like another flip side to that, right, where it's like, this brings every question we have about justice.

Does, should the law apply equally?

Right.

To the grieving man who kills his husband, as it would to the nurse who's killing patients in a hospital, for example.

Right.

Or even further than that.

Right.

Like, should it apply equally to from last season, the upper class couple who were doing party drugs, as opposed to, like, a guy who's been a combat veteran who's clearly sleeping rough and passes away?

You know, it's.

It kind of.

I do think that the show does a good job of not, like, banging your head into this, but kind of making you think, like, huh?

Like.

And as I mentioned earlier, I think Adam really nailed it with, like, who are the people that are in these spaces?

That's because these people, they're dealing with these contradictions every single day.

Yeah.

It's a juxtaposing episode with the quiet and painful death of cancer versus the burgeoning drug syndicate under Lee Thompson.

What a.

What a sad Paul on the whole affair at the end.

Because it makes Stephen realize he can't work with Grace because it freaks him out if she'll get hurt.

And that's not, like, something you could do in episode three, season one.

Yeah.

You gotta have some history built up there.

It's just another example of that actor playing his backstory very well.

Yeah, for sure.

Takes us into the stamp of nature.

That's episode four.

You know, this is the show that told us that the rules.

It's.

Sometimes we wish regular beat cops would break these rules.

And it's Canning and Shane who go gloves off.

And we know, oh, this is no good.

That phrase can't be good.

Yeah, right.

It's not the beat cops who we.

We have the.

The vigilante fantasy.

Right.

Or the Dirty Harry.

But then, you know, Shane.

Especially Shane.

Tommy's Complicit to some.

More or less.

But Shane is doing things that are blatantly illegal.

Yeah.

You know, it's kind of like, I think many of us say, like, oh, it doesn't matter that X, Y, or Z happened.

That person was a criminal, but that person still had rights under the law, if the law means anything.

Yep.

There's a.

There's Kristofferson playing in this episode.

Yeah.

What a great little nod to our lost officer, Jerry.

We've got that nice little scene in the first episode there where Tommy has gone from not knowing anything about Johnny Cash to opining that Johnny Cash's American Recordings at the end to the point where Annie just wants him to shut up.

Yeah, forget about that.

Which.

That made me laugh.

There's a good Hamlet quote in this episode, too.

I appreciated that.

Yeah.

Yeah, that was good.

And this is too.

Episode 4.

You see the progression of Lee Thompson, who was unassuming under Dixon.

You know, he was his cab driver at the beginning to head dealer.

Having Hamill afraid of him hits sets the tone.

I suppose there could be critics who would say, well, that's just too unrealistic for him to be immediately be afraid of Lee Thompson at this point.

But, you know, Hamill's aging out.

I suppose he killed a rival.

He did kill Dixon, like, after he could kill Hamill.

Yeah, he started.

I think you're right, Blaine.

Someone could criticize it.

My reading of it is he played it really close to the chest until he saw his time to make his move.

And now that he's made his move, he's doing.

He's kind of.

He's started doing things to, like, intimidate, even to the extent of like, just having an army friend.

Right.

Kind of guard, sort of guarding.

You know, he's talking to his nephew, sort of guarding the door there.

Right.

So when Hamill comes out, there's another big guy with tattoos who knows how to use firearms.

Right.

And with the knowledge that they killed Dixon.

Yep.

Yeah.

So that.

That, to me, it worked where he's.

He's.

Now He's.

He's consolidating authority when it comes to.

Policing, like Shane's doing.

He and Tommy are right.

You can make the small arrest, but you're probably not solving the bigger issue, but you can't go around beating people either.

And it's another.

It seems to be.

Theme of this show, right.

Has been like, what are you.

What are you able to give up?

Right?

Like, is it.

Is it right to maintain an IRA contact who's Pumping drugs out and selling weapons that you can get a bigger fish down the way.

Is it right to violate someone's civil rights because you know that they're guilty and it's going to get you?

And then with Jen and Happy's case.

Right.

Do you.

Is it.

You know, the man who blew up a.

What do they call it?

The chip shop?

Yes, but he.

But he was an operative.

But it had to happen because he would.

His cover would have been blown otherwise.

And they ran him successfully for 20 years.

You know, what's.

What's the payoff?

Where is.

Where's the line?

Is there a line?

I'm glad you cleared that up for me.

Just then.

I was a little confused on the plot line of how.

Why that guy was so reluctant to talk.

He was.

Yeah.

Because he was told to leave it alone.

Because they knew he was the informant.

They knew he was gonna.

The guy who was an informant.

He was under suspicion.

So they knew that that bomb was going to be set, but the police did nothing so that there wouldn't be any.

So that he would pass the suspicion.

And then they.

And then they ran him as an operative for the next 20 years.

Makes a lot of sense.

So they.

So they actually know who killed Happy's family.

And it had some degree of government sanction.

Gotcha.

Yeah.

Happy's father and brother killed in that bomb.

Lee's only way to instigate change is to play their game.

But try it.

Better, cleaner, safer.

And that's just not the case.

Working in these systems just burns you out, separates you from your family.

Like we see with Grace and Cal in this episode.

Or demoralizes.

You see a little of that in Tommy.

Mm.

It does feel.

You know, Lee makes a point with Hamill, like, hey, this place isn't great, and the drugs are not helping.

Being sold in our neighborhood.

Right.

And Lee's like, well, I'm just gonna sell them everywhere but here.

And Hamill's like, that's not gonna work.

And.

And it's for, you know, like, he.

It.

Like.

He's right.

He is.

He's deluding himself.

Like, you can't.

You can't, like, add bad things in to make a good outcome happen.

You can try.

Yeah.

It just.

That's a.

That's a rare solution that works.

Absolutely.

I may be jumping around a little too much, but I did have an issue with this episode, is I didn't think that they had adequately defined the stakes for Jen's storyline of sussing out more information for that bombing.

But you Seem to have grasped it better than I.

Somehow or another, I just did not catch that.

That bombing that happened during the Troubles.

It did cause me to be a little less interested in what Jen was up to, though.

I was real happy that they included her as a solicitor now.

Yeah, I like that they kept her on.

The one person we see who was a cop not doing cop stuff.

Right.

And definitely, you know, expand.

You have to expand.

You can't just keep doing season one things.

But I was.

I just think I was a little confused.

I bet they did define the stakes well enough.

I just didn't quite catch them because it seems as though you did.

That was my understanding of it.

And it did.

It.

It felt like it fits very thematically.

It does feel thematic.

Okay.

So since you know the plot a little better than I.

There did.

Were the stakes that relevant since it was so historical feeling rather than present tense.

Yeah.

Because for me, worked.

Because these old divisions are so alive still.

Right.

Like we saw an ex IRA guy who's running drugs through the city.

We've got paramilitaries from the other side of this and we've got someone happy whose pain is still very much there and very much real.

And it's just, I think it's a good, like, reminder that there's, there's like.

There's a shadow of the past over everything.

Well, no actor has the look of beleaguered like that poor guy who's playing Happy.

Yeah, yeah, he, he, he's.

He's.

He's a sweet soul.

You kind of gotta love him.

But he's got the sweetest eyes of any actor.

On level with Matthew Reese, I suppose he's up there in television history with Matthew Reese when it comes.

That's a good sad eye.

That's a good, A good comparison.

Matthew Reese being Welsh and this guy being Northern Irish, I guess.

Yeah.

If he's from Northern Ireland, he is Irish.

His name is.

I had to look it up because I had that tab open.

Patty Jenkins.

Oh, what an actor, that guy.

Yeah.

And he has done all kinds of stuff and.

Yeah, well, you know how it is with so many of the British actors.

Right.

Like they start in theater.

Theater, of course.

So it looks like that's his background and he is in fact Northern Irish.

That takes us right up to the edge of episode five.

And what we'll do is we will talk about episode five and six next week to put a little bow on it because we have covered this show Blue Lights pretty extensively and definitely going to be talking about task episode one.

And we'll be talking about alien Earth finally in spoiler section.

We'll get to that.

Thank God.

Thank God.

Donovan's been looking forward to that.

He's a fan.

So if you want to play along at home, if you're still with us in spoiler section and you want to play along at home, that's blue lights the all of season two next week.

Alien Earth, big chunk of it.

What, two, three episodes at the very least.

Task episode one is I will be able to watch.

Sounds good.

Yeah.

It's the end of our episode.

We appreciate y' all listening.

For Adam, for Dawn of an iron, blame.

And maybe you just want to avoid the chip shop this week.

It's better for pizza.

Pizza.

Pizza is probably the go to for Friday.

Okay.

Not the chip shop.

Yeah.