There is an argument between a live-in couple that is so accurate, so true to life, that I literally jolted upright and stared straight into the screen, because I’d been there and done that, more than once.

Now if this were an American series on Netflix everybody would be talking about it.

Actually, I was evaluating this latest season of “Blue Lights” as I was watching it. Rather than seeing it as exotic, a BBC production set in Belfast, I tried to watch it as a native would…to see if the show was really better than all American productions or…

Now the truth is “Blue Lights” is not the best English show I’ve ever seen, not even the best in the cop genre, for that I’d probably go with “Line of Duty,” but just when you’re settling in, entering the third episode of six, it gets intense. That’s when you know you’ve got a good show, when you can’t divorce yourself from it, when you’re involved, when you care about the actors and what happens.

So a few of the actors are too good-looking to be street cops. Maybe that’s my American bias, where good looks are only second to wealth in terms of advantage, but Nathan Braniff as Tommy Foster…I’m straight and I can even see his appeal…he’s got a magic, a charisma based on his looks that the average person does not possess. And maybe it’s the perfect coif, but Siân Brooke as Grace Ellis…she seems like she should be at a society party, wielding great power as opposed to down on the street. As for the two other woman street cops, Katherine Devlin and Dearbháile McKinney…I think their good looks are on purpose, they’re both babes playing against type, they’re cops because they want to make a difference. And isn’t it the people who want to make a difference who are always in the line of fire, the ones those with wealth and power look down upon if for no other reason than their remuneration is low and they’re in the line of fire, like social workers, like cops…

Now this is not London, this is Belfast. And the actors are from Ireland, the accents will blow your mind, as well as the constant use of “wee”…you’ll probably want to leave the subtitles on. And having been to Belfast…it’s eerie. The war between the Catholics and the Protestants…there are certain places you just don’t go. It’s palpable, with walls and barbed wire and if you’ve never been there, you might not believe some of what happens in “Blue Lights,” but you should.

So, this season focuses on drugs and their dealers and runners. And that’s not a new topic, but it’s well-executed here, and not everything that happens is predictable. But a running theme is the personal danger the peelers are in, and the choices they make.

The peelers… Cops in Britain are called that after Sir Robert Peel, who started the modern police force. And there’s an inscription “NO PEEL” hammered into a door at Oxford’s Christ Church in 1829. It’s eerie, right there in Harry Potterville, as if it was etched the night before.

And everybody in Belfast hates the peelers. 9/11 flipped the script in the U.S. Firemen and policemen (and women) were now seen as heroes, and if you came of age in the sixties, this is confounding, for they were the enemy…as they still are in Belfast.

And it’s a constant war between the public and the peelers, and the peelers aren’t always in control…to a degree they’re barely hanging on.

So, with the intensity, the acting (with no LOOK AT ME! elements) and the script… “Blue Lights” is no American show. It’s a definite cut above. The fact that the media was consumed for months over the last iteration of “White Lotus”… That Hollywood production isn’t in the LEAGUE of “Blue Lights.”

But “Blue Lights” is on BritBox and it’s foreign, if even in English, so it’s too heavy a lift for most Americans. But irrelevant of press, truth shines through. “Adolescence” was the best TV series last year, it was recognized by the Golden Globes, however worthless that organization might be, but it still has not penetrated the national consciousness in America, and I don’t suppose it ever will, although it’s there for the watching.

Anyway…

Right before the argument between Stevie and Grace, Grace has a moment…

Grace has a scene, gives a speech, not a soliloquy, she’s directing it at a perp, but it’s lengthy with pauses and emotion and unlike Meryl Streep, you do not see her acting. It’s pretty amazing.

And what Grace reveals in that interlude…

Stevie is unaware of. That’s the basis of the fight.

Secrets in a relationship, you don’t want any. Because they undercut the bedrock of the connection. So, when Stevie finds out that Grace has withheld… He’s indignant, he can’t get past it… And then, Grace says this is exactly why she didn’t tell him, for fear of his reaction…and it ratchets up from there, to the point where the entire relationship hangs in the balance.

I mean if you don’t have fights in relationships, that just means one person is not speaking their truth. But after you’ve been together for a while, in excess of a year or two, there’s an underlying bond you count on, and if anything threatens that, it shakes you up, throws everything into question. You’re talking, maybe not with your voices raised, but there is an intensity, and it starts to dawn on you, this could be it, this could be the trigger for the end of the relationship.

And the following morning when Grace walks into the kitchen, not quite lovey-dovey, but open and not arguing… Stevie still isn’t over it. He throws her statements from the night before back at her. I’m getting anxious as I write this!

And that’s the essence of art. The little things. The truths that resonate. That’s what we’re looking for, that’s what we connect with. It’s not about professionalism, not about the look, but the essence, which is too often absent from American TV. I watched “The Pitt,” I am not in the medical field, but it was long and drawn out and not for one moment did I not think it was Noah Wyle. I mean this is the best you can do?

And then there’s Bruno Mars. The talk this week is about his stadium dates and how many tickets he sold. And I’ve got nothing against Bruno per se, however, I listened to the new single and it’s POP! There’s always been pop, but it was looked at askance by those creating art…those on FM as opposed to AM, the classic rockers as opposed to the popsters.

It started to change back in the MTV eighties…to the pre-Beatle Top 40. All hits all the time. Everybody was trying to make a pop hit, and now pop dominates and everybody says to respect it…but this is like respecting the tech billionaires because they are rich. What we’re looking for is honesty, truth, reality, not surface…like we get in this argument on “Blue Lights.”

And I used to find this honesty in music much more than other media. Music made more money than movies, despite getting no respect, music paid for the Warner cable system. Makes me crazy the people who still respect the movies…that’s not where the action is today, and it’s certainly not in music, it’s in streaming television.

And the public knows it.