Belfast cop series Blue Lights shines brightly

Coming in on a show after its first season can be tricky.

Take this Irish police drama - this is the start of the second season. The writers had no doubt spent the first season fleshing out the characters, giving them all a different backstory and set up their allegiances.

And now here I come at the start of the second episode, ignorant of all that stuff and wanting to be entertained and not confused.

Normally, that would be arrogant on my part - but here the writers have managed to make it seem as though I haven't missed anything.

Of course, I really have - the first season dealt with the fall of the McIntyre criminal gang, and season two kicks off with various other crims rushing in to fill that void.

But whether I knew that or not doesn't matter - the second series seems designed to be entirely self-contained.

There's no requirement on the viewer to have tuned in last season to know what's going on. It all makes sense, and I couldn't see any aspect of the plot that made me think "ah, that must be about something that happened in the first season".

Having watched the start of series two I want to go back and start from the beginning - because it looks like a cracking TV show.

Surreal comedy can easily end up on very shaky ground indeed.

Sometimes it can simply be lazy; the attempts to be whacky, weird and surreal are used as a ploy to mask the fact that there really isn't a lot going on in the comedy stakes.

The surrealistic tail wagging the comedy dog, if you will.

At the other end, the comedy dog is in control of its tail and makes sure it only gives a surrealistic wag when it enhances the comedic value of a joke.

For the most part, Mawaan Rixwan's series - he wrote and starred in it - lands on the lazy end.

The surrealistic aspects so often feel like they've been included to try and get a cheap laugh. Oh, look, he's doing a silly walk. Now he's acting like a caterpillar - how very surreal.

But really, not very funny.

I'll be honest, I have no idea why Shakespeare is so famous.

Yeah, I know he wrote a lot of plays, but I don't know why everyone thinks they're really good.

Is it just because his plays were among the very few that were bound up in volumes and kept, while the others were performed and disappeared?

Is it a case of the Emperor's new clothes, where no-one wants to admit they don't get it lest they come across as a philistine?

Or is there actually something magical going on within those words he wrote?

I'm buggered if I know. I have paid good money to watch a Shakespeare play now and then and have had absolutely no idea what anyone is talking about.

This series didn't answer that question at all.

Aside from the historical re-enactments, it's a bunch of actors and academics talking about how awesome Shakespeare is.