Channel 4 give go ahead for Derry Girls creator’s new series

The broadcaster Channel 4 has commissioned a new series from the creator of Derry Girls, Lisa McGee.

The new eight-part series How To Get To Heaven From Belfast is a comedy-thriller set to be made by Hat Trick Productions for Channel 4.

The series will follow three women from Belfast, Saoirse, Robyn and Dara, who meet up at the wake of an old friend, Greta.

Now in their 30s, and ‘leading very different lives’, the three ‘soon find themselves embroiled in a dark and twisted mystery’.

As the synopsis goes on to read: “Saoirse a successful writer with a compulsion to hit the self-destruct button, Robyn, a sweary, stressed out mother of three young boys, and Dara, a full-time carer of an elderly parent, who hasn’t managed to move out of her teenage bedroom.

“When the women each receive an email informing them of the death of Greta, an old classmate they were once very close with, there’s clearly some unspoken, unfinished business. 

“The friends decide to attend Greta’s wake and discover all may not be quite as it seems. These women are about to embark on the most exciting adventure of their lives.”

It continues: “An adventure that will take them from their native Belfast, a city full of ghosts, the pain of the past plastered on every mural, to the mythic wildness of rural Donegal and right across Ireland, as they attempt to put the pieces of the puzzle together and uncover the truth.

“An adventure that will take them from their native Belfast, a city full of ghosts, the pain of the past plastered on every mural, to the mythic wildness of rural Donegal and right across Ireland, as they attempt to put the pieces of the puzzle together and uncover the truth.

“Even if their own complicated, chaotic and messy lives often get in the way. Not so much a ‘whodunit’ as a ‘what the hell happened.’ 

“How To Get To Heaven From Belfast takes us on an enthralling and hilarious journey, exploring the themes of friendship, memory and what happens when life doesn’t turn out quite how we expected.”

McGee, who is the writer and creator of the critically-acclaimed and multi-award-winning Derry Girls, said she had wanted to make a comedy-thriller set in Northern Ireland ‘for a long time’.

In a statement for Channel 4 publicity, McGee said: “I feel so incredibly lucky to be making another show for the phenomenal Channel 4 and to be doing it with Hat Trick Productions again and the creative team behind Derry Girls, the mighty Liz Lewin and Caroline Leddy, is just a dream.

“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.”

Derry Girls, which first aired on Channel 4 in 2018, followed four teenage girls and ‘a wee English fella’ growing up in the city during the 1990s and was partly based on McGee’s schooldays at Thornhill College.

The series was hugely successful, winning a number of awards before it came to an end in 2022.