Strangford Lough provides back for BBC crime drama

Strangford Lough provides back for BBC crime drama

24 February 2021

STRANGFORD Lough is the star of the show in a new crime drama, which started on BBC One on Sunday night.

The lough provides a stunning back to Bloodlands, a four-part thriller which centres on a tough no-nonsense detective who finds himself being drawn back into the murky world of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

Cold Feet star James Nesbitt plays DCI Tom Brannick, whose past returns to haunt him when a Range Rover is pulled out of Strangford harbour.

Strapped to the car, which belongs to a missing haulage firm boss with IRA connections, is a postcard of the Harland and Wolff shipyard cranes, Samson and Goliath.

Brannick recognises the picture as the calling card of a legendary assassin known as Goliath. The legend goes he was a serving police officer who vanished without trace 20 years ago and among his original victims was Brannick’s wife, who worked for military intelligence.

Against opposition from old friend DCS Jackie Twomey, Brannick and his partner, DS Niamh McGovern, break open the Goliath case in the hope that it will help them solve the kidnapping.

As they dig deeper, they find gaps in the original Goliath investigation. When a vital clue leads them out to an island on Strangford Lough, a discovery is made that changes everything.

A dig on the island reveals a burial site containing three skeletons with bullet holes in their skulls, with one wearing an owl pendant necklace that Brannick’s wife always said “helped her see in the dark”.

In this Sunday’s episode the buried bodies give up their mysteries, while Brannick sets off in perilous pursuit of the potential kidnapper.

Bloodlands is written by Chris Brandon, who grew up in Strangford and now lives in London.

The 39 year-old says he came up with the idea for the series in 2013 when he came back to Strangford to visit family members and to help a childhood friend make a short film.

“It’s absolutely inspirited by the area. Strangford Lough is such a beautiful place,” he said. “I was inspired by the islands — that great sort of archipelago of islands — and the light. It also ways felt very cinematic and I thought it would be a great place to tell a story that had a very distinct sense of place.”

Filming the series was not without its difficulties for Nesbitt, who said the cold while filming on Strangford Lough often let him speechless.

“At times it was hard to speak, my mouth would be paralysed and I just couldn’t get my jaw moving,” he revealed.

“We’d be transporting crew, equipment, food, toilets to these remote islands and it was bitterly cold, the wind early comes and cuts you through to the bone.

“It was a hard and brutal shoot — challenging, but at the same time fabulous.”

Bloodlands continues on BBC One this Sunday at 9pm.