Blue Lights was created and written by Declan and his fellow former journalist Adam Patterson.
The Northern Irish pair have worked together previously, including on the BBC hit drama The Salisbury Poisonings, which claimed 2020’s biggest TV premiere audience.
However, this year saw the screenwriting duo receive their first nomination at the NTAs, for their police series based around three new PSNI probationary recruits.
Blue Lights launched on BBC One and BBC iPlayer in March to five-star reviews, but lost out in the New Drama category at Tuesday’s NTAs to viral Netflix sensation Wednesday.
Declan joked that he was “definitely the only person” who went to the glitzy awards ceremony who then ended up in their hotel room at 1.53am writing a team sheet for an U13 hurling match for the following night.
The Derry native, who manages the U13 team at Bríd Óg Hurling Club in north Belfast, will lead the young boys out on Wednesday evening as they face rival squad St Galls in division one of their hurling league.
“This is the big match,” Declan explained.
“We lost a game a couple of days ago and, God’s honest truth, I was far more gutted about that than I was when Blue Lights didn’t win [the NTA]. With the show being nominated, that just felt like a win, but when you lose with hurling, you have lost that game.”
The cast of Blue Lights on the red carpet at the National Television Awards in London (Pic: Getty)
The ex-Panorama reporter added that the entire event at The O2 in London was a huge success for the Blue Lights crew, regardless of winners.
“We had a great night. There was an after-party from 10.30pm until 1am and that was really good fun, chatting to lots of random people from the industry. I ended up talking to some of the presenters from SAS: Who Dares Wins,” he said.
“I think I was talking to all of them at one point; a lot of them had served in Northern Ireland way back in the day. They all really liked the show and said they voted for it.
“I’ve never been to the NTAs or on the red carpet. I’ve been to a few awards ceremonies for current affairs and documentaries at the BBC, but never anything big and entertainment-based like that.
“It was kind of bizarre looking around and seeing these recognisable faces who you think you know but obviously you don’t.
“It was just really nice to spend time with the cast and producers in their gladrags, because we don’t really get time to socialise together, it’s all work. It was a great old night.”
There were 39 nominations on the initial longlist for the New Drama category, therefore, Declan noted, he “really didn’t expect” to make the shortlist.
“Obviously we were all a little bit disappointed for about five minutes [when we didn’t win].
“Then we just had a great night, because getting nominated is far more than we would have expected, especially with our first series.
“At the after-party, there was an enormous amount of goodwill for the show. The producers of The Graham Norton Show came over to talk to us about how much they enjoyed it. We were also talking to the producers of Happy Valley for quite a long time. Obviously, they had a lot of wins, and they were saying how much they enjoyed Blue Lights.
“There were a lot of people talking about Richard Dormer’s performance as Gerry. People from England who had never been to Northern Ireland were saying they were so fascinated by the show and didn’t expect to be.
“There was so much positivity and love for the show that we were all just blown away; strangely, it was like we had kind of won, in the sense that it was a real feel-good evening.”
The second series of Blue Lights is currently being filmed in Northern Ireland and is expected to hit our screens in the late spring or early summer of next year.
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