‘Cracker’ barrel of laughs
Netflix’s hilarious ‘Derry Girls’ binge worthy
It made me laugh like few things in recent years.
The first episode of “Derry Girls” — a British comedy series that can be streamed in these
parts on Netflix — ends with a narration joke so well-constructed that I’ve revisited it at least 15 times.
(I’m not exaggerating. If anything, that’s a conservative guess.)
To borrow a bit of slang used in the show — largely about a group of girls coming of age in the 1990s in Derry, Northern Ireland — the gag is “cracker.”
That’s “beyond brilliant” to you and me, and it’s also an adequate way to describe the series from writer Lisa McGee, who grew up in Derry and with whose work I must admit I’m otherwise unfamiliar.
I guess it’s about time to get familiar with it.
“Derry Girls” debuted in the U.K. in January 2018, the season landing on these shores in December via Netflix. Netflix dropped the almost-as-wonderful second season yesterday.
As with some other British comedies — including the fantastic “Catastrophe” and the simply spectacular “Fleabag” — a season of “Derry Girls” is only six, roughly 30-minute episodes. This show is as easy to binge as a plate of corned beef and cabbage rolls.
I wanted to savor the second serving, but it was all I could do to spread the three hours over three nights. That’s serious self-control, folks.
The show’s aforementioned very first episode does a wonderful job of introducing viewers to the time and place — scene of the late era of the Northern Ireland conflict, aka The Troubles, between the Irish/Catholics and English/Protestants — and the characters, starting with Erin Quinn (the entirely terrific Saoirse-Monica Jackson).
As written by McGee and performed by Jackson, Erin is the most delightful of hot messes, at times confident, at others “ascared” (both afraid and scared). She’s quite prone to making bad decisions but is, ultimately, a fine Derry girl.
She lives with her willful mother Mary (Tara Lynne O’Neill) and her constantly put-upon father Gerry (Tommy Tiernan) and her baby sister. Also packed in the house are Erin’s Aunt Sarah (Kathy Kiera Clarke) and cousin Orla (Louisa Harland), as well as set-inhis-ways family patriarch, Joe.
To say that the dynamic between Joe and his son-inlaw is humorous is an understatement.
“Why don’t you just leave my Mary alone?” Joe asks Gerry as the two get into one of their myriad little spats.
“Because we’ve been married for 17 years, Joe,” the ever-put-upon Gerry responds. “We have two children. And because we’re in love with each other.”
At this point, the nearby Erin produces the most-repulsed of faces and utters, “Oh, boke!” — apparently a Scottish word for vomit. (You learn so much.)
The more important supporting characters, however, are Erin’s schoolmates; along with Orla, they are the anxiety-ridden Clare (Nicola Coughlan), the wild Michelle (a fiery-funny Jamie-Lee O’Donnell) and Michelle’s laid-back English cousin, James, who’s just been sent to live with her family. (Out of fears he would be beaten to a pulp at a boys school, he’s being sent to the girls’ Catholic school, which leads to a fun running joke in the first episode with a terrific payoff.)
They’re a highly entertaining crew, perhaps never more so than in the first season’s third episode, when, to get out of a stressinducing exam, they go along with the very wrong belief that they have witnessed a statue of the Virgin Mary producing real tears. While the school’s cynical no-nonsense headmistress, Sister Michael (the always-entertaining Siobhan McSweeney), doesn’t buy it for a second, a priest, Father Peter (Peter Campion), sees it as the heavenly sign for which he’s desperately been searching.
In the second season, the girls try to hook up with a group of Protestant boys, attempt to befriend a new student of Chinese descent because she seems exotic — she’s from Donegal, Ireland, and sounds like, well, someone from Donegal — and hope to spend the day with American first daughter Chelsea Clinton when then-President Bill makes what is expected to be a highly anticipated visit to Derry.
And if you like the music of alt-rockers The Cranberries, so much the better, as a few of their songs appear in the show.
Pro tip: Turn on the English subtitles. The Irish accents are as thick as stew, and all that slang doesn’t help.
That’ll make me “buzzy” for a while, but come back soon, “Derry Girls.” That would be “class.”