The Northern Irish duo behind a new BBC police drama based on the PSNI said taking the risk to create a series based on their home has been the "toughest challenge" they have been faced with.
Blue Lights is a six-part crime drama that follows three probationary police officers working in Belfast created by Declan Lawn and Adam Patterson.
Speaking at a special screening of the first episode ahead of its official release on Monday, the pair hope the humour, heart and grit of their new series can translate to the people of Northern Ireland.
Read more: WATCH: Trailer for new BBC police drama set in Belfast
"It matters so much what people from here think of it and how it goes down - only because we have to live here afterwards," Declan laughed.
Discussing the timing of a show following the danger that PSNI officers face a month after the shooting of Detective Chief Inspector John Caldwell, the cast and crew sent their thoughts to him and his family.
Declan said: "Our hearts go out to John Caldwell and his family and we are just thinking of him constantly.
"I would say everybody in this room is so shocked at what happened two weeks ago and it's strange because I think there is a different kind of shock depending on how old you are.
"I was shocked because I remember stuff like that and my teenage daughters were shocked because they'd never heard of anything like it."
Coming from backgrounds in journalism, Declan and Adam spent intensive time researching policing in Northern Ireland before creating the show - partaking in ride-alongs and having a police advisor on set during filming.
Adam said: "Declan and I spent many years working in journalism so it's our approach to anything to dive in really deep to try and understand the subject better and we don't really understand creatively how we would prepare to represent people if we didn't engage in that lengthy research process.
"The job they do is inherently heroic, especially here, they put themselves in danger every day and the things they do essentially uphold civic decency and help society push on through the darkness."
They stressed that the balance between representing the seriousness of the topics explored in the show and peppering it with our classic Northern Irish humour was important in creating a show that felt realistic to viewers.
Declan continued: "The humour is not just germane to the PSNI - we all cope with difficult things with dark humour and I think generally here across society, this kind of strain of dark humour had entered the DNA of our culture and I don't think it is a bad thing.
"We certainly saw during our research period spending time with police officers, that's how they deal with difficult things and I think it is so emblematic of our society here."
"Everything that Declan and I tried to build at the script stage comes from character because the way we see the world is through people and the way we relate to each other as a nation is through people" Adam added.
"If we are going to take on a challenge like this, it has to be born through character so the characters that we formulated, the probationers and the fact they are just out of training college, there is a relatability there - what would any of us do if you opened the door faced with this inherent threat.
"We can see a little bit of ourselves in all of them and that's hopefully how the characters represent."
Declan explained that they wanted Blue Lights to be "unflinching" in the way it looks at things, "especially the police".
He said: "It is fundamentally an optimistic show - In my 16 years of journalism, not just here but all around the world, weirdly enough my takeaway was that the vast majority of people are good.
"A small number of people that aren't get all the press and usually have a lot of the power and that's where problems come from but most people are good and as we move through this series, you start to understand everybody.
"It is a show that is anti-categorisation, anti-binary, anti-absolute and lives in the grey where we all actually do live."
Adam added: "To make a creative product about your home is the toughest challenge we've been faced with. It's complicated - Belfast itself is a complicated place and we all know that.
"It's a place we all love and detest at times. We build these characters and we purposely built them so they are not easily disseminated or identified as binary."
You can watch Blue Lights on BBC One from Monday 27th March at 9pm. It will also be available on BBC iPlayer
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