{"id":285605,"date":"2026-02-07T11:48:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-07T11:48:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/285605\/"},"modified":"2026-02-07T11:48:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-07T11:48:09","slug":"a-messed-up-cousin-of-derry-girls-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/285605\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018A messed-up cousin of Derry Girls\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a small, cramped room in Belfast<\/a> a group of people are huddled in the cold, watching live footage of three women entering the same hotel room again and again. This is not some sort of law-enforcement sting operation but the set of How to Get to Heaven from Belfast, Lisa McGee<\/a>\u2019s excellent new comedy thriller.<\/p>\n

Behind the scenes of a TV production is not hugely glamorous. The small room is in a huge warehouse-type space at Titanic Studios in which has been built a very convincing-looking hotel corridor and the hotel room on which we are spying.<\/p>\n

All of the crew are wearing warm jackets. It\u2019s pouring rain outside. The three women being surveilled are the actors Ro\u00eds\u00edn Gallagher<\/a> (also in The Dry and The Lovers), Sin\u00e9ad Keenan<\/a> (Being Human and Unforgotten) and Caoilfhionn Dunne<\/a> (Industry and Britannia), who play Saoirse, Robyn and Dara, three schoolfriends from Belfast, now in their late 30s, who have reconnected for the funeral of a fourth friend, who has died in mysterious circumstances and with whom they share a terrible secret.<\/p>\n

McGee calls the Netflix<\/a> show \u201ca messed-up cousin of Derry Girls<\/a>\u201d. This is partly, she says, because she based the core characters of both on the same people \u2013 Michelle, Jamie-Lee O\u2019Donnell<\/a>\u2019s character in Derry Girls, and Robyn from How to Get to Heaven from Belfast draw on the same person, for example.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was always part of a group of friends that were, you know, dicks. We were never cool. I think it really resonates with people … being not cool together. I love that … I take real people that I enjoy being around, or I find funny, and I put a spin on them or put them in a situation.\u201d <\/p>\n

In this instance: \u201cWouldn\u2019t it be funny if they were made to solve a mystery?\u201d<\/p>\n

Almost all of McGee\u2019s output, from Being Human to London Irish to Derry Girls to this production, has been about quirky friend groups, and almost all of her core characters are based on her real friends. <\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like I\u2019m sort of obsessed with friendship, and especially friendship over a long period of time and people who\u2019ve seen the different versions of you,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n

\u201cHere they literally know where the body is buried. In a friendship group there are things you don\u2019t want to talk about, because you\u2019re not proud of that person that you were, but these people know everything about you. I\u2019m fascinated by that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"HowHow to Get to Heaven from Belfast: R\u00f3is\u00edn Gallagher, Caoilfhionn Dunne and Sin\u00e9ad Keenan in the new Netflix production. Photograph: Christopher Barr\/Netflix <\/p>\n

How do McGee\u2019s friends feel about being story fodder? \u201cI\u2019ve used actual things and forgot to tell them,\u201d she says. \u201cThere\u2019s a bit in Derry Girls where the grandfather meets a new woman \u2013 and that happened. My friend\u2019s dad, his wife died, and then he meets this new woman at chapel. <\/p>\n

\u201cAll her sisters were furious. I just used that, changed it a wee bit, and then forgot to tell her. And she was, like, \u2018What the hell?\u2019 I just go, \u2018You shouldn\u2019t tell me!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Her friends are also hilariously uninterested in what she does, she says. \u201cThey say, \u2018Lizzie, it\u2019ll be an Oscar next.\u2019 And I\u2019m, like, \u2018It can\u2019t be an Oscar!\u2019\u201d \u2013 because she writes television, not film. \u201cAnd they\u2019re, like, \u2018Don\u2019t put yourself down!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

She laughs. A little later she says, \u201cI\u2019m convinced my best friend doesn\u2019t even know what I do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her skill at writing about groups of friends makes it easy for the actors, according to Keenan. \u201cShe describes the girls like a three-headed beast. They\u2019re three separate entities, but they also move as one. Each character is so well written and defined, you kind of stick to your brief \u2013 and you can\u2019t really go wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

That friendship leaked off-screen. \u201cI\u2019d not met either of them,\u201d Keenan says of Dunne and Gallagher. \u201cAnd then you just kind of find yourself going, \u2018Are we …\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

Gallagher finishes the sentence: \u201cAre we friends?\u201d<\/p>\n

They have a running joke about the word \u201cguffaw\u201d, because they did a lot of guffawing on set. Gallagher refers to it as \u201cthe G-word, the G-bomb.\u201d <\/p>\n

Why haven\u2019t they used it yet today, she asks.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause you slagged me for using it!\u201d Keenan replies.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe chortled, we belly-laughed \u2013 laughing like you might actually wet yourself,\u201d Gallagher says. \u201cWe had so much fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why they all leapt at doing a Lisa McGee project, according to Dunne \u2013 \u201cthe opportunity to muck around. I personally got tired of crying for money.\u201d<\/p>\n

Women characters are still more likely to feature in domestic or love stories than in productions like How to Get to Heaven from Belfast, she says. \u201cI think it\u2019s so rare to see women of our age on adventures.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a caper,\u201d Keenan says.<\/p>\n

\u201cA caper with women knocking on 40, which is very rare,\u201d Dunne adds.<\/p>\n

McGee has had the title How to Get to Heaven from Belfast for years. She got it from a sign she saw held by a preacher in the city. Does she worry the move to Belfast will alienate Derry<\/a>? <\/p>\n

That\u2019s why she cast Bronagh Gallagher<\/a> in an important role, she says. \u201cBecause the minute you have a Derry icon in it they can\u2019t say, \u2018Why did you set it in Belfast?\u2019 So I hope that cunning plan has worked.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Patrick Freyne: Jessica Fletcher is a child-free, middle-aged writer having the time of her life, and she is my role modelOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

McGee was a huge fan of Columbo and other crime dramas as a child. \u201cI remember when I was little watching Murder, She Wrote in the late 1980s, early 1990s in Derry, and saying to my mammy, \u2018Why does nobody get murdered here?\u2019 And she said, \u2018Lisa, what planet are you living on?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I wanted a fancy Murder, She Wrote murder. Someone being murdered with a fountain pen in a library.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"WriterWriter Lisa McGee with Derry Girls cast members Nicola Coughlan , Louisa Harland, Dylan Llewellyn and Saoirse-Monica Jackson. Photograph: Niall Carson\/PA Wire <\/p>\n

Combining mystery with comedy also allowed McGee to get over a certain paralysis after the enormous success of Derry Girls. Though, again, pitching a mystery story is an old obsession. Her original idea for Derry Girls was, in fact, to have the characters investigating crimes against the backdrop of the Troubles. Where did she come up with the idea for the new show?<\/p>\n

\u201cI went back to see my old school, where Derry Girls was set, and it had been lying empty for 20 years,\u201d she says about Thornhill College, which she fictionalised as Our Lady Immaculate. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey built a nicer, fancier school, but because it was a convent they couldn\u2019t do anything with the [old] premises, so it just sort of lay there empty, as if people just walked out during a zombie apocalypse.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Real-life Derry Girls: \u2018The nuns are gone but the pupils are the same\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\u201cI had heard it had become a place for ghost hunters to go and visit, so I asked my husband to let me go and have a look around. And so he drove me \u2013 and he wouldn\u2019t come out, because he was too scared. I walked around, and it was really weird. There were literally school scarves hanging up, writing on blackboards and wildlife growing over things … <\/p>\n

\u201cI just got this feeling I was going to bump into myself as a teenage girl. I thought, What would she think of me and my choices and how I conduct myself now? And then I came up with these characters.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like Derry Girls, How to Get to Heaven from Belfast is filled with unapologetic local slang and references despite being aimed at an international audience. (The project was originally with Channel 4<\/a>, which commissioned Derry Girls, but Netflix ultimately became its home as the new series grew in scale.)<\/p>\n

Depicting such unabashed Irishness in an international show would have been almost impossible a few years ago, she says. \u201cWhen I was starting out you couldn\u2019t. You just weren\u2019t allowed. And I just love it so much. <\/p>\n

\u201cI know it can be very problematic at times, being Irish, and our history is so complicated, but I really, really do love it … I love the landscape and I love the sense of humour. <\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like I\u2019m finally getting away with doing the thing I\u2019ve always wanted to do, and I\u2019m going to just keep doing it until they tell me to stop … It feels more truthful, honestly.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"BehindBehind the scenes of the programme with Ro\u00eds\u00edn Gallagher. Photograph: Netflix\/Christopher Barr <\/p>\n

The cast maintain that it was McGee herself, with Derry Girls, who kicked down doors in this regard. \u201cWhen I first started out,\u201d says Gallagher, who was born in Belfast, \u201csomeone told me that I would \u2018need to get rid of the little leprechauns\u2019 in order to have a career.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhaaat?\u201d Keenan says with horror.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe joy I have now in being a part of this Netflix show that is going to go on a global platform where I didn\u2019t have to slow down and I didn\u2019t have to amplify or Americanise my speech in order to tell this really important story,\u201d Gallagher continues. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think the reason why Derry Girls was such a success is because it\u2019s true. It\u2019s funny because it\u2019s true. It\u2019s funny because that is how fast we speak. It\u2019s funny because this is the people that you meet, and they weren\u2019t softened and they weren\u2019t watered down.\u201d<\/p>\n

The trio say they\u2019re in awe of McGee\u2019s attention to detail. \u201cIf the rhythm of something isn\u2019t quite working,\u201d Keenan says, \u201cshe\u2019ll step in and go, \u2018Will you try and move that word there?\u2019 It\u2019s so exact and particular, yet so natural, the way she writes. <\/p>\n

\u201cShe is involved in everything, but not in a controlling way \u2013 in a very ensemble, team, how-do-we-do-this-best? way.\u201d She pauses. \u201cIt\u2019s like music.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gallagher\u2019s character, Saoirse, is closest to McGee herself. She\u2019s a writer and the creator of a fictional crime drama called Murder Code that she has begun to hate but can\u2019t quite quit.<\/p>\n

\"HowHow to Get to Heaven from Belfast writer and creator Lisa McGee. Photograph: Lucy Curran\/Netflix <\/p>\n

Was McGee working through her own issues in writing this? She laughs. \u201cI think so.\u201d She \u201cvented a lot\u201d in the original scripts \u201cabout being a writer, and a lot of that got cut\u201d. Liz Lewin and Caroline Leddy, two of the show\u2019s executive producers, \u201cwho I\u2019ve worked with a long time, said, \u2018This is not plot, and it\u2019s not actually that funny. It\u2019s just you raging.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

What sort of things was McGee raging about? She laughs. \u201cHow hard writing was,\u201d she says. \u201cI wrote a whole speech about how hard it was to get something made.\u201d She shakes her head in mock annoyance at herself. \u201cBut nobody wants to hear that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The reality, she says, is that Saoirse\u2019s situation is very different from hers. McGee has always worked on finite projects that she loves. If there is any commonality between the two of them it\u2019s that they both sometimes feel they should become a more \u201cserious\u201d type of writer.<\/p>\n

But McGee has had a change of mind on that. She increasingly regards comedy as a very grave business indeed. \u201cSince Derry Girls, and since hearing people talk to me about Derry Girls and their own experiences, I would say now I take my silliness very seriously, because I think it is so important to bring a wee bit of joy and laughter to people. It sounds like a cliche, but comedy is important.\u201d<\/p>\n

How to Get to Heaven from Belfast is the first time she has worked with a writers\u2019 room. That process of collaborating with other comedy writers \u201cwas such a gift\u201d, she says. <\/p>\n

She also marvels at her actors and wonders at the awards judges who seem to think comedy acting is easier than the dramatic kind. \u201cComedy actors can do the serious stuff, but it doesn\u2019t always go the other way.\u201d<\/p>\n

McGee is now working on a mockumentary, among other projects. \u201cI would still love to have a crack at the studio sitcom,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n

The comedies that inspired her when she was younger were things like Seinfeld and Friends and Frasier, multicamera sitcoms made in a studio and running for three-quarters of a year. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I worry about is we\u2019ve taken so much time out from that [format] that we\u2019ve lost those writers,\u201d she says. \u201cThat was a whole other level of writer. That was hard-core.\u201d<\/p>\n

She recently rewatched every series of Frasier. Sometimes, in the middle of an episode, she would hit pause to see if she could work out where she would take the story. \u201cAnd I never, ever got anything nearly as good. They\u2019re just so friggin\u2019 good.\u201d<\/p>\n

McGee has also been craving the comfort of a fixed, recurring set because she and the cast and crew of How to Get to Heaven from Belfast had to schlep their way all over Ireland. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been crazy,\u201d she says. \u201cSo next time I\u2019m going to do a studio comedy where there\u2019s a coffee machine and I have a comfortable chair.\u201d<\/p>\n

How to Get to Heaven from Belfast is on Netflix from Thursday, February 12th<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a small, cramped room in Belfast a group of people are huddled in the cold, watching live…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":285606,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[4501,137337,134042,1795,7726,93,61,60,137336,25798,1868,2443,128277,134041],"class_list":{"0":"post-285605","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-belfast","9":"tag-bronagh-gallagher","10":"tag-caoilfhionn-dunne","11":"tag-channel-4","12":"tag-derry","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-ie","15":"tag-ireland","16":"tag-jamie-lee-o-donnell","17":"tag-lisa-mcgee","18":"tag-netflix","19":"tag-northern-ireland","20":"tag-roisin-gallagher","21":"tag-sinead-keenan"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=285605"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285605\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/285606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}