Farewell to “Derry Girls”, a masterful comedy about the Troubles

A national museum, the Ulster Museum is home to a diverse range of items, including archaeological artefacts from the time of St Patrick, a skeleton of the extinct Irish elk, jewellery from the Spanish Armada and paintings by Sir John Lavery. In 2020 another object joined the displays: a blackboard on which are scrawled alleged differences between Protestants and Catholics.

The new exhibit is a recreation of the most famous prop in “Derry Girls”, a masterful comedy which broadcasts its final episode on May 18th. The teen sitcom has explained Northern Ireland to the world, and to itself. It is set in the 1990s, during the final weary years of a 30-year sectarian conflict known as the Troubles in which 3,500 people were killed. But the four schoolgirls at the heart of “Derry Girls” have more immediate concerns—exams, boys, parents and rebellion. Lauded by critics and audiences, “Derry Girls” has already joined Van Morrison, Snow Patrol and Seamus Heaney in the list of tiny Northern Ireland’s cultural ambassadors.

Two days before the province’s historic election on May 5th in which the republican party, Sinn Féin, won the most seats in Belfast’s devolved legislature, the televised leaders’ debate was broadcast at the same time as “Derry Girls”. In a place where politics really matters, the politicians found they were far less popular than the sitcom.

For those who came of age in Northern Ireland in the 1990s, the series offers nostalgia—in terms of both the music, outfits and sense of danger and the well-intentioned attempts to convince Catholics and Protestants to get along. At a cross-community event, a young priest asks the group to think of things that Catholics and Protestants have in common. Erin (Saoirse-Monica Jackson), who constantly lurches between cockiness and angst, is asked to go first. She thinks hard before eventually giving up: “I’m actually drawing a blank here, to be honest.”

The increasingly desperate priest searches in vain for similarities, but the children can see only differences. By the end of the exercise the blackboard for similarities is empty; the board for differences is full. They include the laughable—“Protestants hate ABBA”, “Catholics have more freckles”, “Protestants keep toasters in cupboards”—as well as examples that are either true (“Protestants love the Queen”) or allude to actual prejudices (“Distance between the eyes”).

The blackboard demonstrates the depth of the writing by Lisa McGee, herself a Derry girl. The board was only on screen for seconds yet lampoons the absurdity of sectarianism with a detail which could be studied by academics. The Ulster Museum’s head curator, Hannah Crowdy, says they were working on a project to explore sectarian stereotyping when that episode was broadcast. “It just distils perfectly how silly and reductive stereotypes can be,” she says. The blackboard is now a permanent part of its collection.

“Derry Girls” has also been a hit with audiences further afield, thanks in part to a global broadcasting deal with Netflix. Though set in the north-west of Northern Ireland, its characters have recognisable traits: the brash confidence of the profane Michelle (Jamie-Lee O’Donnell), the insecurity of the studious Clare (Nicola Coughlan), the strained patience of Gerry (Tommy Tiernan) with his nagging father-in-law, Joe (Ian McElhinney). The girls’ group includes a boy, the “wee English fella” James (Dylan Llewellyn), who has the misfortune to be both English and stuck in a girls’ school. His presence clarifies the characters’ antics for foreign audiences because Northern Ireland’s problems must be simplified for him to understand them.

Northern Ireland was, and in many regards still is, an abnormal society. Yet even in dysfunction, normality persists. The truth is that while thousands died and tens of thousands were injured, far more people survived the Troubles physically unscathed. There were moments of profound societal trauma which brought the province to a standstill. But life went on amid chaos.

These divergent realities are perfectly juxtaposed in the final scene of the first series. As the girls dance with youthful freedom at their school talent show, their elders are at home watching television. A newsflash asks for anyone with medical training to urgently come to the scene of a bombing in which 12 people are already dead. The poignancy is deeper for having been preceded by the rollicking escapades of teenagers.

When Colum Eastwood, the MP who represents Derry in the House of Commons, travels to London or Washington, he now has people not just wanting to talk to him about his most famous predecessor, John Hume, or the peace process, but about “Derry Girls”. In a city where a plethora of murals once featured gunmen and threats, the characters’ faces adorn a huge wall. “Every day you go past, there’s queues of tourists getting their picture taken at it. This will become an iconic show,” Mr Eastwood says. Referring to a famous Derry rock band which emerged in the 1970s, he argues that the sitcom is “doing for a modern audience what The Undertones did back in the day—these teenage guys set against the backdrop of war, just singing about teenage stuff. They made people realise that ordinary life went on.”

Northern Ireland once exported huge ships (including the Titanic). It then exported death as the Troubles spread with terrorist attacks in Britain, the Republic of Ireland and continental Europe. Now it is exporting something which is a product of that history, but not a prisoner of it. It is able to laugh at itself, while artfully observing that much of what happened can be nothing other than a cause of sorrow. ■

“Derry Girls” is available to stream in Britain via All4. In other countries seasons one and two are available to stream on Netflix