The problem with a mystery comedy thriller is that it’s very hard to be mysterious and funny at the same time. They manage it in the Knives Out movie because Daniel Craig is a very good comic actor. But it doesn’t work in How to Get to Heaven from Belfast (Netflix).
It’s written by Lisa McGee, who brought us Derry Girls, the best TV comedy of all time. So you expect it be funny. But there is too much space between the laughs here, what with all the mysterious goings on. So I ended up wishing McGee just made another kitchen table comedy packed with brilliantly painted characters.
The characters here are two and a half dimensional. The story revolves around three late 30s friends from school in Belfast — Saoirse, Robyn, and Dara — who get the news that their friend Greta has died. We know from the opening scene that the four of them got stuck in something spooky back in school. That ended in a burning building and a pledge to tell no one what happened. (Including the viewer, for a while.)
“How To Get To Heaven From Belfast” Season 1. (L-R) Michelle Fairely as Margo, Matilda Freeman as Maria, Ryan McParland as Feargal & Emmett J. Scanlan as Owen O’Neil. Picture: Netflix
Greta’s funeral involves the three women driving to Donegal, because this is Netflix and Donegal is the most photogenic place on the planet. The trio are part-lifted from Derry Girls. Robyn is the wise-cracking one with a heart, Dara is goofy and in her own world, and Saoirse is a hit TV-show writer who sounds a bit like Lisa McGee.
There are some nice lines when the three of them meet up in Belfast. I like the way they greet each other with “so we’re dying now”, a bullseye take on the Irish attitude to death. But it goes astray when Robyn’s Range Rover breaks down in the mountains and a hot young guy with an out-of-place Dublin accent arrives to rescue them. Saoirse eyes him like a meal and we have our icky love interest. After that, it becomes a caper.
Greta’s house is the classic unkempt home in rural Ireland, straight out of Father Ted. Her husband doesn’t seem too pushed that his wife is being waked upstairs. Probably because (spoiler alert) she isn’t, it’s someone else’s body in the coffin and Greta has in fact been kidnapped by Booker, a star turn by Bronagh Gallagher.
After that it jumps from twist to twist, but there aren’t enough laughs in between. Most of them come from Ardal O’Hanlon’s inspired take on a local hotelier.
It was always going to be huge ask to find another Derry Girls. You’d admire the chutzpah for jumping genres. But we came here for the laughs.