Main Cast: Roisin Gallagher, Sinéad Keenan
Creator: Lisa McGee
I love a screenwriter with a distinct voice. Lisa McGee, who brought us the amazing Derry Girls, is one of those talents. She uses her hometown of Derry, in Northern Ireland, as the center of her TV universe. In Derry Girls she dropped us into the middle of the Troubles.
In How to Get to Heaven from Belfast, we begin, unsurprisingly, in Belfast, and in the present day. Three women, friends since childhood, get the news that a fourth classmate has died. The trio travels to County Donegal (home to Derry) to pay their respects. We learn quickly that these women have two things in common:
- They have secrets from their shared past.
- They are outrageously eccentric in the best ways.
Our main character is Siobhan (played by Roisin Gallagher). The writer/creator of a successful television show, she is engaged to be married to the director and has a big imagination. She is joined by Robyn (Sinéad Keenan), the beleaguered mother of three boys, and Dara (Caoilfhionn Dunne), who is her mother’s caregiver.
It doesn’t take long for the group to find that all is not as it seems in County Donegal and they are off on a twisty investigation into the death of their old friend.
How to Get to Heaven from Belfast offers an unusual and delightful combination: it is a very good mystery/thriller, and it is very, very funny. The dialogue is rapid-fire and smart, the characters are fantastically combative, and the plotting is tight and intricate. The humor varies from bone dry wit to middle-aged slapstick while maintaining the intrigue and suspense. It’s a razor fine line to walk and McGee and Co. do it with aplomb.
I had more fun with How to Get to Heaven from Belfast than anything in quite a while. I like McGee’s skillful weaving of her own experiences into her characters and stories just as much here as I did in Derry Girls. I definitely needed the closed captions to keep up with the accents because there is no time to play catch-up. The pace is fast and there’s a lot going on.
Watch for bits of visual humor throughout. It’s not really sight gags, but more a consistent through-line of elements that get funnier as we go along. Also keep an eye out for Saorise-Monica Jackson from Derry Girls and Michelle Fairley from Game of Thrones.
I was under the impression that How to Get to Heaven from Belfast was a limited series, but the finale leaves room for another season. It stands alone just fine, but there is potential, and McGee has said she would like to continue the series. I hope she does. In the meantime, I highly recommend these eight episodes for anyone who even remotely liked Derry Girls or just loves a good thriller with a lot of dark humor.
Sue reads a lot, writes a lot, edits a lot, and loves a good craft. She was deemed “too picky” to proofread her children’s school papers and wears this as a badge of honor. She is also proud of her aggressively average knitting skills. TV and indie movies are her jam.
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