"Whether it's your friends or your family, everybody has their own relationships with, and viewpoints on, the police," says Dearbháile McKinney, star of BBC drama Blue Lights. The Londonderry actress and her co-star Katherine Devlin, who also grew up in Northern Ireland, say relationships between police and communities there were at the forefront of their minds as they prepared for filming. The Bafta-winning series follows police officers working at the fictional Blackthorn Station in Belfast.
But, for many watching, the drama feels all too real. The difficulty police in Northern Ireland still face was thrown into focus this weekend by the long-running dispute over the controversial Garvaghy Road parade route when officers had to prevent a march by Protestant Orangemen through a largely Catholic area. Many scenes in Blue Lights highlight the distrust of, and hostility towards, the police in some communities.
Warning: This article includes spoilers for the first three seasons of Blue Lights. Devlin plays Annie Conlon, whose storyline deals with her having to move away from home as a result of death threats because she's from a Catholic family. "We do have similarities - she comes from a Catholic background and so do I," Devlin tells BBC Newsbeat.
"I know girls like Annie. "But I've realised we're different in a lot of ways. Mainly, to be honest with you, I wouldn't go into the police." Devlin says that forming Annie's character was about trying to understand why she decided to become an officer and "for that to be the crux of her story".
"I think a huge thing with this season is the idea of home and what home means to her," she says. "Just battling that inner dialogue that she has with 'is it all worth it?' "Especially her being a Catholic and the intricacies of that and the politics of that. "It's heavy stuff and she has to really think about it." The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) had its lowest number of Catholic applicants in more than a decade earlier this year, with some pointing to "fear and apprehension" in those communities putting them off joining the police.
One of the force's aims when it was founded in 2001 was to build broader community support and increase Catholic officers. At the time, only 8% of the force was from that background. In a statement sent to Newsbeat, Chief Constable Jon Boutcher said the PSNI was "totally committed to being more representative of the communities we serve".
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