From street plays to TV success: Derry Girls creator Lisa McGee talks about her new show

Nearly four years on from the emotional finale of Derry Girls, writer and creator Lisa McGee has released her new project on Netflix.

How To Get To Heaven From Belfast blends her trademark humour with mystery as a group of women reunite following the death of their childhood friend.

“I’ve always loved murder mysteries from when I was a little girl,” McGee told Sky News.

“I was obsessed with Jessica Fletcher and Murder, She Wrote, so it was really like whenever someone gave me the chance to do it, I was going to grab it.

“But I knew I needed to do it my way. I wanted it to be very female-led, have a big comedy element to it, a bit messy.”

The Irish writer’s journey into storytelling began long before the worldwide success of Derry Girls – a comedy set in Northern Ireland in the 1990s about what it’s like to be a teenage girl living amongst conflict.

McGee detailed how, growing up, she’d create plays for the neighbourhood where she lived to act out.

She said: “[I was] doing plays in my street and forcing everyone to be in them, even if they didn’t want to, you know, because everyone’s mum was just like, go and be in Lisa’s play and give me peace for an hour.

“So, I was kind of the unofficial babysitter for the whole street. All the mums loved me, but the kids probably didn’t because I was making them learn lines and stuff like that.”

McGee said, even at a young age, the stories she’d create had a darker element, possibly influenced by her upbringing in Derry before the Good Friday Agreement.

“I remember saying to the executive producer of Derry Girls, Liz Lewin, who works on How to Get to Heaven as well, when I was in London: do you know the way, the army would check your car? And she was like, ‘No, no! What are you talking about?'”

“So, like these little things, I started to realise, oh, there could be something interesting in telling these stories.”

She added: “Outside of Ireland, people couldn’t believe it, but that was what was going on. But it was so every day to us. It just became so part of your routine, and it was only like years later when I moved to London that I actually… realised that’s probably not normal.”

She said it was that familiarity that sparked her interest in telling “truthful” depictions of what it was and is like living in Derry and Belfast.

“I wanted to see myself and my friends on screen, which sounds incredibly simple, but I feel like it doesn’t happen that often and I sometimes feel particularly Irish stories and stories about Irish women, they can be quite tragic and serious, you know?,” she said.

“I really want to keep making stories about where I come from and I feel just so lucky that I can do this now and I’ll keep trying to do it until they tell me to stop.

“I think Ireland’s such a complicated, but incredible place, you know? So much history that hasn’t fully been explored, the people are very funny, so I’m really excited about that, about the new stories we’re going to tell now.”

How To Get To Heaven From Belfast centres on three thirty-something women who reunite following the death of their childhood friend.

Starring Roisin Gallagher, Sinead Keenan and Caoilfhionn Dunne, it sees several familiar faces from Derry Girls take on new characters in the murder mystery comedy.

McGee has said a second season isn’t a certainty, but she has her fingers crossed.

“I haven’t asked, I have been talking about it and I don’t know if I’m allowed to but I’d love to do it again because I love writing for those three women, I love those actors, they’re just so talented and so funny.

“I would do it again in a heartbeat, it just depends on who watches it I guess and how many people watch it.”

How To Get To Heaven From Belfast is out on Netflix now.

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