Policing is a tough job - no matter where you are in the world.
Officers are exposed to danger on a daily basis, to heartbreaking situations and they regularly see the worst excesses of society.
How they react is carefully scrutinised and often critiqued.
That's especially the case in Belfast - a city still dealing with the legacy of conflict and where a culture of mistrust of the police has been embedded in some communities.
The challenge of policing a post conflict society is very much at the heart of Stephen Nolan's slick BBC Northern Ireland fly on the wall documentary series 'Peelers: The PSNI For Real'.
Filmed over two years, the talk radio host and a cameraman ride in the back of police cars with a group of officers as they drive around the city on day and night shifts.
Wearing a body cam, he observes how the officers handle volatile situations involving members of the public.
This includes raids on drug dealers' apartments, car crime, a visit to a squat occupied by addicts, dealing with inebriated or stoned members of the public who become abusive and handling a potentially explosive situation where a working class community is intent on driving a sex offender out of his home.
It's at times a tough, very sweary watch.
But Nolan and his production team also focus on the impact of what they see on the group of officers they accompany - the risks the police are exposed to, the trauma, the trade offs and the trench humour,
Very quickly, the audience gets to know Constables Anna, Perri, Jade and Adam and Sergeants Tom, Dave and Nigel.
Nolan is treated like almost one of the gang, coming in for stick from the officers on shifts about his dress sense.
He also gets it in the neck from some members of the public.
Billed in some quarters as the "real 'Blue Lights," you can see why the Police Service of Northern Ireland is particularly keen on a show that brings the reality of policing into the living rooms of people who often take the role of officers for granted.
But as slickly filmed as 'Peelers: The PSNI for Real' is, it has flaws as well as strengths.
Some viewers might find the show sets itself up for parody - the opening credits sequence is a bit cloying, making the police officers look like they're contestants on 'The X Factor'.
Nolan's reactions straight to camera about what he is witnessing and his attempts to banter with officers and members of the public also occasionally jars, veering dangerously close to Alan Partridge territory.
Other viewers will find themselves on occasion wondering if the presence of a well known media celebrity like Nolan sometimes inflames the situations the officers encounter.
But what the series does very well is showing the consequential, split second decisions that officers on the beat have to make on a daily basis.
It also doesn't flinch from showing the hardships they are regularly exposed to while on the beat.
The docuseries is at its best demonstrating the levels of drug addiction in Belfast and how much the consequences of that problem contribute to the demands placed on the PSNI.
There's a particularly powerful sequence when Sergeant Dave responds to a call about a broken window in a squat on the lower end of a road leading to a more affluent part of the city.
Inside are two brothers - one of them on a mattress, a thin addict with a tube up his nose.
In a grubby apartment littered with drugs and associated paraphernalia, his brother is emotional, claiming his sibling is suffering from heart failure and dying.
It's a grim, sobering moment that could be straight out of 'Trainspotting'.
In the final episode, we see another addict, who featured in an earlier episode, arrested for assaulting another woman outside a railway station in the south of the city.
After spitting blood in the faces of two officers, she is overpowered and taken to the police station.
On her arrival, we hear her whining like a wounded animal offscreen and even calling out for her dad.
It's a raw, disturbing sequence that rams home her vulnerability and the destructive reality of addiction.
If 'Peelers: The PSNI For Real' achieves anything, it's the way it shines a light on problems many in Belfast and other cities choose to ignore - the drugs easily accessed on the streets, the mental health crisis they exacerbate, the deprivation and crime that flows as a result.
It also makes you thankful for police officers who try their best to manage a desperate situation and try to keep some kind of order in the most challenging of circumstances.
Will the show inspire more people to come forward and join the PSNI and other forces?
Time will tell but we undoubtedly need brave individuals to take on this essential role.
('Peelers: The PSNI For Real' was broadcast on BBC1 Northern Ireland between April 27-May 12, 2026, with all episodes available on the BBC iPlayer on April 27, 2026)
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