Siân Brooke: Blue Lights Belfast riot scenes prescient — SkimNews
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- Siân Brooke was Bafta-nominated for her role as Constable Grace Ellis in BBC's Blue Lights and returns for the show's fourth series, in which her character's identity is revealed online, putting her safety at risk
- Blue Lights series 4 opens with protests outside a migrant centre erupting into a full-blown riot — scenes filmed in spring weeks before real anti-immigration riots broke out on Belfast's streets
- Brooke injured her elbow during high-octane stunt sequences and needed steroid injections before she could pull her gun again, joking she is 'the new Tom Cruise' but 'pulled a muscle picking up a wheelie bin'
- Brooke played Queen Aemma Arryn in HBO's House of the Dragon, dying graphically during childbirth in the first episode — a stint she called 'short and violent' rather than 'short and sweet'
- Brooke has scene-stealing turns in Netflix's Supacell as villain Victoria Kesh (whose 'villainy cranks up in the second series') and Apple's Trying as Karen, plus ITV drama Mavis Eccleston due early next year
- ITV's Mavis Eccleston — where Brooke plays daughter Joy to Penelope Wilton's Mavis — recounts the real-life case of an 80-year-old woman acquitted of murdering her terminally ill husband after a 2018 suicide pact
- Brooke, whose father served in the police force, is an ambassador for Belfast-based youth homelessness charity Macs and climate group the Glacier Trust
Why it matters: With former Panorama journalists Declan Lawn and Adam Patterson scripting migrant-centre unrest weeks before Belfast's real anti-immigration riots broke out, Blue Lights' fourth series arrives with documentary-style prescience — backed by on-set police advisers and a lead whose father served in the force.
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