As Lisa McGee's new series How To Get To Heaven From Belfast drops on Netflix, we approach the four-year marker since her genius TV series Derry Girls left our screens, with the show's beloved teenage group of bandits voting “yes” in the Good Friday Agreement for a hopeful future and Dreams by The Cranberries bringing us all to nostalgic tears.
The plot of McGee's new TV venture may differ from its predecessor, but the writer's heart and soul is in a very similar place, penning another ode to female friendship – but this time, to the messy nature of adult friendship amongst women.
The series follows the chaotic ventures of three women, once part of an “inseparable” friendship group at school and now living very different lives. Saoirse (played by The Dry's Roisin Gallagher) is a BAFTA-winning TV writer, Robyn (Sinéad Keenan) is a frustrated housewife and mother of three, while Dara (Caoilfhionn Dunne) is nursing a broken heart and caring for her ailing mother.
When they hear that their old school friend Greta has died mysteriously, a can of worms is opened regarding secrets buried by the foursome many years ago, leading the remaining trio to journey across Ireland to discover the truth. Peaky Blinders stars Natasha O'Keeffe and Emmett J. Scanlan also appear, with Derry Girls star Saoirse Monica Jackson is also set to reunite with McGee with a role in the series.
While the primary plot of the series revolves around something of a kooky murder mystery – joining the ranks of many recent whodunnit-style releases from the latest star-studded Knives Out movie to the Agatha Christie TV adaptation Seven Dials starring Helena Bonham Carter – it was the friendship dynamic between the three female protagonists that captured me immediately.
Saoirse, Robyn and Dara friendship shorthand is all too familiar to me. In contrast to the starry-eyed ambition of teen girls dreaming of a life beyond school in Derry Girls, we see our Belfast girls all struggling in their own way – and their friends grimly dragging them through. Robyn is unhappy in her marriage and her friends eye roll their way through her denial. Saoirse is successful on the face of things, but the two women who have known her longest aren't convinced that she is fulfilled. Dara acts like she's housebound due to her mother's failing health, but her oldest pals call her out for hiding from her life.
It's a special strain of friendship that only comes with age and years of knowing a person: the no-holds-barred calling out of a close friend on their own dysfunctional decisions with dramatic dialogue and perhaps a lack of patience and compassion at times. It's the very messy reality of adult female friendship, a stark contrast to the starry-eyed portrayal of “best friends forever” narrative of high school bonds, without the slightest idea of what that will truly mean to you in 25 years time. This era of female friendship is no less enduring or vital, and McGee portrays it with flair.
“How To Get To Heaven From Belfast shines a light on how precious, messy and vital adult friendships are," one of the show's stars Roisin Gallagher tells Glamour. "I think Derry Girls brilliantly reflects the indestructible bond created in a group while navigating those formative teenage firsts. While HTGTHFB shines a light on what those bonds become in later life.”
In my experience of these longstanding friendships that were formed when your lives were running parallel, the distance of adult life, expectations and responsibilities may be placed between you. You may doubt whether you can confide your everyday worries to friends whose routine, career or aspirations are so different to your own. But while these friendships may not contain the same codependence or similarity of your school days, the shorthand – the formative bond – shines through.
Roisin recalls that McGee herself was invaluable on set in forming these dynamics, bringing her own experiences to the fore. “I found it really helpful to have Lisa on set and hear her share stories of her own friends and what it was and is like for her," she says. "I got a great sense of the connection and character that we find in the script.”
Roisin tells me that she hopes that audiences in their 30s or 40s may “recognise some of themselves” in Saoirse, Dara and Robyn's dynamic – murder mystery mission aside, most likely. However far you travel in life, literally or figuratively, you can't outrun or replace the women who knew you when you were young. And there's a beauty and ferocity in that kind of friendship that is beautiful to watch on screen.
“While our Belfast girls may be dealing with different dramas than our Derry Girls – marriages, kids, careers... staring perimenopause in the face, rather than exams, boyfriends, girlfriends or lack of trust funds – there is a similarity in the mostly hilarious, sometimes moving, sometimes brutally direct way these women interact with each other.”
How To Get To Heaven From Belfast is available to watch on Netflix now.
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