Ireland’s Troubles unlikely backdrop to comedy series
As a teenager in Northern Ireland in the 1990s, Lisa McGee knew she wanted to be a writer.
But she also swore she’d never write anything about the Troubles, the conflict between Catholics and Protestants that had transformed her tiny country into a war zone.
The depictions she saw in popular culture were always ‘‘so grey and masculine’’ and – worst of all – humourless. ‘‘It just seemed so boring to me,’’ she said from her London home.
But years later, she began to toy with the idea of a series set in a convent school. ‘‘That’s when I started looking at how strange it was to grow up during that time. I realised it was probably very rich territory.’’
The result is the gleefully irreverent Netflix series Derry Girls, which few would describe
as grey or masculine.
Set in the mid-90s in the border city of Derry, it centres on 16-year-old Erin Quinn (Saoirse-Monica Jackson), her large, working-class family and her close circle of friends at a Catholic girls’ school.
A darkly funny story about coming of age amid political violence, Derry Girls blends the typical teenage hijinks – skipping school, drinking cheap vodka – with jokes about bomb scares, British soldiers and the IRA. Much of it is drawn from McGee’s memories of the era.
For her, the show is a more truthful representation of the Troubles, and of the Northern Irish comic sensibility.
‘‘It was so uncertain those times, so unpredictable, and maybe to be able to cope, we developed this weird sense of humour about it,’’ she says.
In Northern Ireland, Derry Girls has become a rare unifying national institution. It is the most popular series in the country since modern records began in 2002, according to its UK broadcaster, Channel 4.
A mural depicting the cast has been painted in the city centre, a potent sign of change in a place where murals typically display partisan propaganda.
McGee is ‘‘keen to make Derry Girls a show for everybody, because we don’t have many things that are for all of us’’, she says. ‘‘It’s been 20 years since the Good Friday Agreement and we’re still segregated. That’s always at the back of my mind. Even saying where you’re from – Derry or Londonderry – is problematic.’’
As a teenager, McGee often had to go on cross-community projects, aimed at fostering understanding between Protestants and Catholics. ‘‘I think of Derry Girls as a crosscommunity project,’’ she says, noting that series director Michael Lennox is Protestant. ‘‘We grew up on different sides of the fence, but here we are making this show.’’
Like Erin, McGee grew up in a working-class, Catholic family. They didn’t support paramilitary groups such as the IRA but lived in a community where many did.
An overwhelmingly Catholic city near the border with the Republic of Ireland, Derry has long been a flashpoint of tension. And it continues to be: In April, journalist Lyra McKee was killed during a riot.
The city is ‘‘a bit of an underdog’’, McGee says. Jobs were scarce, but women were often the family breadwinners, because the only available work was in shirt factories, leading to a female-dominated culture.
‘‘That’s why so many women from there are very outspoken. The men are just a support act. The dads are just there to make sure whatever the mam [says]
happens a lot of the time.’’
McGee discovered she wanted to be a writer when she was about 9 and became obsessed with Jessica Fletcher, the amateur sleuth portrayed by Angela Lansbury in Murder, She Wrote. ‘‘I thought I was going to be this great crime novelist who solved murders in her spare time,’’ she says.
This preoccupation led to a degree in English and drama at Queen’s University, Belfast, where McGee discovered the work of Irish playwright Brian Friel, from Donegal.
‘‘It was the first time I realised you can write about where you’re from and write the way you speak and it can still be very profound,’’ she says.
‘‘Reading his plays, it was the first time I thought our world was interesting as well.’’
After starting a theatre company that put on plays above pubs, she got an agent in London and landed work writing for television, including Being Human, about a group of 20-something monsters.
She created a sitcom, London Irish, that was ‘‘love it or loathe it’’ but gave her the confidence that there would be interest in a show about Northern Ireland.
McGee says Derry Girls came easily to her. ‘‘I think I had a lot of material in the back catalogue from my school days.’’
The hardest part was replicating the contradictory sense of community in a place such as Derry, ‘‘where everyone knows your business. We grew up in this scary, violent time, yet no-one locked their doors. It doesn’t make any sense’’.
The series is filmed in Belfast and Derry, which can create some humorous misunderstandings. During production of the first season, McGee’s father heard some co-workers saying the British Army had returned. ‘‘And he said, ‘No, that’s my daughter’s TV show,’ ’’ McGee laughs. – LA Times
Derry Girls is streaming on Netflix.