Adventures in Streaming: Ireland’s comedy shines on the small screen

How To Get To Heaven From Belfast. (L to R) Saoirse Monica Jackson as Feeney, Shauna Bray as Midwife & Bronagh Gallagher as Brooker Cr. Courtesy of Netflix/Christopher Barr

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“In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love — they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”
— Harry Lime (Orson Welles) in The Third Man (1949)

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Italian inspiration notwithstanding, one can’t help thinking of that famous quote when considering Ireland’s output of film and television in the past few decades. Cursed by the violence and division of its history, the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland combined has produced more than its share of fascinating fare.

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On film, that history has inspired heavily dramatic work such as Angela’s Ashes (1999) or Jim Sheridan films such as In the Name of the Father (1993) or My Left Foot (1989).
But lately, Irish comedy — angry, ironic, absurd — has tended to shine through the preceding gloom.

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This is especially evident in the recent Netflix series How to Get to Heaven from Belfast from writer-producer Lisa McGee. Funny, yes, but this eight-part comedy-mystery is pitch-dark around its edges.

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Three childhood friends Saoirse (Roisin Gallagher), Robyn (Sinéad Keenan) and Dara (Caoilfhionn Dunne) are drawn together after hearing of the untimely death of their old schoolmate Greta (Natasha O’Keeffe). They share a ride to crash the family’s wake, but when Saoirse actually sees the deceased, she realizes the corpse is not Greta. And since Greta’s husband is the top cop in the community, Saoirse is at a loss on how to proceed, except to return to the scene of a crime from the quartet’s school days that haunts them all.

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Since Saoirse happens to be the showrunner of an Irish mystery series, she opts to turn detective herself, enlisting the help of Liam (Darragh Hand), a constable who arouses more than Saoirse’s sleuthing instincts.

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It’s all a very compelling mystery, encompassing a missing investigative reporter, a fiendish nun, and a formidable hit woman named Booker (Bronagh Gallagher, whom you may remember as one of the backup singers in The Commitments) apparently working for a secret organization.

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In its own Irish spirit, the darkness doesn’t get in the way of a good time. Keenan’s Robyn is a formidable character, a woman who brings ferocious mom energy to every challenge. But Dunne’s Dara may be the show’s comedy MVP, in a subtly poignant turn as a woman challenged by reconciling her Catholicism with her lesbianism.

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One would probably expect nothing less of Lisa McGee, who made her reputation with the sublime three seasons of Derry Girls (2019-2022, also on Netflix).

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Derry Girls. Netflix

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Set in the ‘90s (with an accompanying period-friendly soundtrack), it too follows a group of young women coping with issues institutional, social and familial.

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While “the Troubles” are manifest in their lives — such as suffering the indignity of passing through British checkpoints or dealing with an IRA member hiding in the boot of the family car — much of the girls’ time is spent on more age-appropriate concerns, such as sneaking off to a concert, meeting boys, or in the case of Nicola Coughlan’s character Clare, coming out as a lesbian.

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Presumably, it is the character of Erin (Saoirse-Monica Jackson) who is McGee’s proxy, a young woman with literary aspirations. And Jackson’s performance is unerringly hilarious. Though the time and setting are specific, anyone who was ever a teenager could understand Erin’s default setting of personal outrage in the face of injustices both significant and trivial. And Erin doesn’t differentiate much. (It was a pleasure to see Jackson take on a role in How to Get to Heaven from Dublin, although in a role profoundly different from Erin.)

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