Both seasons of Irish comedy series Derry Girls is streaming on Netflix.
Sometimes you don’t know what kind of promise a series holds before you have finished watching a couple of episodes. However, Irish TV show Derry Girls is different. Here, you just have to get past mere ten minutes of the pilot to know that the series will be worth your time. Created and written by Lisa McGee, Derry Girls features Saoirse-Monica Jackson, Louisa Harland, Nicola Coughlan, Jamie-Lee O’Donnell and Dylan Llewellyn in significant parts.
A story of teenagers in 90s Northern Ireland
The show’s narrative follows five teenagers (four girls and a guy) as they embrace their hectic, hard-to-understand school and personal lives. Derry Girls is set in 90s Northern Ireland when the area was going through an ethno-nationalistic conflict, which is known in modern history as The Troubles. While the conflict in itself doesn’t feature in the series, what the writer does is cleverly influence the characters’ setting and choices and let it be somewhat motivated by the ‘low-level war.’
Black comedy
Derry Girls’ humour is not on the nose. It is understated, and can be often described as ‘situational comedy’ as well, owing to all the weird mishaps the lead characters get into throughout the show. There are two powerful things at play here which makes Derry Girls’ comedy seem funnier and wittier than the usual run-of-the-mill drill. One, its fine writing, and the second, the performances by its all-round incredible, believable cast.
Nostalgia is a good sport
Of late, makers have been resorting to the good old trick of nostalgia to win over the audience. Sometimes it works, others times it doesn’t. In Derry Girls, it is not only used as some dependable hack, but as a proper element of the show. The series is set in 90s Northern Ireland, a culture and a part of the world which many of us (and I am talking about Indians here), would not be familiar with. Relating to content set in the 80s and 90s America is that much easier. But we don’t naturally welcome and imbibe content from, say a country like Ireland. And Derry Girls made me realise that if every maker were to be as honest in their art and writing as Lisa McGee, we would actually be more open to content from other countries. And that change is happening thanks to content makers and their distributors like Netflix and Amazon.
An easy, entertaining binge
Derry Girls is sweet, emotional and hilarious. And what more can you want from a show except that it moved faster without losing any of its elements mentioned above? Derry Girls does that too. Two seasons long with six episodes each that span not more than 25 minutes, Derry Girls is a guaranteed blast. Watch it to believe it.
Derry Girls is streaming on Netflix.