After the award-winning success of her series Derry Girls, which followed the lives of four school girls and a ‘wee English fella’ during the 1990s in Northern Ireland, creator Lisa McGee has announced her latest project: a comedy-thriller series called How to Get to Heaven from Belfast.
Like Derry Girls, the series will be created and written by McGee, and will focus on the close friendships at the heart of the story. However, this time the friends are in their late thirties and have chosen very different life paths since their days at school together. The story follows Saoirse, Robyn, and Dara, who are brought together again by the death of their old school friend, Greta. Saoirse is now a successful writer with middling impulse control, and Robyn is a foul-mouthed, stressed mother-of-three, while Dara has been stuck still living in her childhood bedroom and taking care of an aging parent. Things regarding Greta's death not as straightforward as they seem, and the three women find themselves on a journey out of Belfast and across Ireland in search of answers.
How to Get to Heaven from Belfast will take place over 8 one-hour episodes and will air on Channel 4. While the series was commissioned by the head of Channel 4’s Head of Comedy, Charlie Perkins, it will also fall under the drama and thriller genres. Regarding the new series, Lisa McGee said in a statement for Channel 4, “I've wanted to make a comedy thriller set in Northern Ireland for SUCH a long time. I cannot wait to share these flawed funny women with everyone”. The series will be produced by Hat Trick Productions, the company behind Derry Girls, and sees the addition of McGee’s Derry Girls collaborators Liz Lewin and Carline Leddy as executive producers, alongside Jimmy Mulville. Lisa McGee’s Derry Girls aired three seasons from 2018 to 2022, and won multiple accolades, including a BAFTA TV and a Royal Television Society award. While no casting announcements have yet been made for How to Get to Heaven from Belfast, there’s hope we’ll see some familiar faces in the upcoming series.
In the meantime, you can rewatch Derry Girls on Netflix, Channel 4, and Sky.