How do you follow up a show like Derry Girls? Over the course of three seasons, Lisa McGee’s comedy, set in her home city during the tail end of the Troubles and laden with semi-autobiographical elements, snowballed from an in-the-know Channel 4 favourite to a near-universally beloved Netflix hit. The five lead characters – four girls and a “wee English fella” – now grace a mural near Derry’s famous city walls, grinning in their green Catholic school uniforms.
For her next act, McGee has shifted her focus… 70 miles or so down the road. This time around, she’s still chronicling female friendship, and yes, there are a few flashback scenes that could well have been plucked from her previous show. But although How to Get to Heaven from Belfast might not be all that far from Derry Girls in geographical terms, and in some of its overarching concerns, tonally, it’s very different indeed.
