Derry Girls: Luck of the Irish as viewers get a second chance to enjoy Channel 4’s hit comedy

Comedy to appeal to your inner adolescent, says David Sexton
School’s out: from left: James Maguire (Dylan Llewellyn), Michelle Mallon (Jamie-Lee O’Donnell), Erin Quinn (Saoirse Jackson), Orla McCool (Louisa Harland), Clare Devlin (NIcola Coughlan)
Channel 5
David Sexton22 March 2018

You haven’t seen Derry Girls yet? Really? You’re in luck.

Episode One originally went out at 10pm on Thursday January 4 this year and it was at once apparent just what a hit Channel 4 had on its hands. The initial audience was 1.6 million and it had soon been viewed by 2.5 million.

In Northern Ireland, Derry Girls has had simply the best viewing figures of any series since records began. It became C4’s most successful comedy launch for many years, scoring more highly than The Inbetweeners, The It Crowd and Catastrophe.

The first act in post of Channel 4’s new director of programmes, Ian Katz, was to commission a second series, even before the second episode of the first had aired.

So here it is again on E4, as well as being available in its entirely on All 4.

Derry Girls, scripted by Derry native Lisa McGee (Being Human), is set in Derry/Londonderry/Stroke City in the early Nineties, when the bombs were still going off, here treated as just a routine, sometimes inconvenient, backdrop, at least until the end of episode six.

The four 16-year-old girls, all pupils at Our Lady Immaculate College, are immediately emphatic presences, all boldly over-acted — truculent, crumple-faced aspirant writer Erin (Saoirse-Monica Jackson), always close to hysteria, her wacko cousin Orla (Louisa Harland), their foul-mouthed friend Michelle (Jamie Lee O’Donnell) and the panicky baby of the group, Clare (Nicola Coughlan).

Maybe their unfortunate hanger-on, “the wee English fella”, James (Dylan Llewellyn), Michelle’s much-derided cousin, isn’t quite up to their pace — but the rest of the cast is superb, above all Sister Michael (Siobhan McSweeney), the brutal, terrifyingly impassive headmistress. And Lisa McGee’s script is full-on funny from the get-go, manic and fizzy, the gags richly Irish, Derryish even.

For her first day back at school, Erin has plotted to wear a denim jacket to express her individuality, until her mother puts a stop to it. So Clare immediately sheds hers too — “I’m not being individual on my own,” she wails. Complaining about delays caused by a bomb clearance, grumpy Granda Joe (Ian McElhinney) says: “How long does it take to defuse a fecking bomb now? Sure, the wee robots do all the work.”

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For all the novelty of the setting, there are echoes here of Father Ted, The Inbetweeners and every high school show ever made, from Mean Girls to High School Musical, maybe even St Trinians — and much of its zing depends on the snappy editing (when single scenes or shots go on too long, they turn a touch more ordinary).

But where Derry Girls feels fresh is the way it puts these girls — girls and not, as usual, teenage boys — centre-stage and is then so truthful to the raw aggressions, the sudden insecurities, the wild yearnings and hapless confusions of being 16.

It’s broad stuff, played as hard as possible for laughs, almost slapstick sometimes, but it has this irreducible kernel of reality, in touch with the inner adolescent we all harbour.

What’s all the more astonishing is that the actresses here are so much older than the roles they are playing. They all turn out to be in their mid-20s except for Coughlan who, incredibly, is 31.

Putting them back into school uniform could have been a slightly pervy embarrassment, couldn’t it? But the sheer brio and self-belief of Derry Girls carries all before it.

Derry Girls airs Thursday, March 22 at 9.30pm on Channel 4.

Pick of the day

Seal Team

The pilot episode of this all-action American drama series follows the activities of an elite Navy SEAL unit (Bravo Team), led by troubled master chief special warfare operator Jason Hayes (played by David Boreanez, who previously distinguished himself as vampire-turned-private-detective Angel in Buffy The Vampire Slayer).

Hayes appears to be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, and is undergoing therapy about the death of a colleague, while also being pressured by his estranged wife to make it to their daughter’s choir concert. Happily, he’s distracted when sent on a mission to Liberia to capture a high-level ISIS leader who has taken a woman hostage.

His team includes rebellious Clay Spenser (Max Thieriot) and Amanda “Mandy” Ellis (Jessica Pare, who played Don Draper’s wife Megan in Mad Men) as the team’s CIA liaison.

Directed with gusto by Christopher Chulack, who won an Emmy for his work on ER, and written by Benjamin Cavell (ex-Homeland), the storyline transcends politics, focusing on the personal dramas of the team.

Sky One, 9pm

Screen Time

Contagion! The BBC Four Pandemic

Don’t be fooled by the jaunty, MasterChef incidental music. This science experiment is designed to alarm. “It seems there’s no shortage of things to worry about,” warns Dr Hannah Fry. “Global terrorism, the devastating effects of climate change, and volatile world leaders.” And yet, she continues, according to the government, the risk of a killer flu pandemic is greater than all of them.

The show follows the results of an app designed to track the spread of a possible pandemic, and help offer solutions. Identifying “social superspreaders” is one possible solution, along with washing our hands more often, though — worryingly — London takes an early hit from the theoretical virus.

BBC Four, 9pm

London Go

In a reaction to ever-unfriendlier public spaces, artist Stuart Semple is staging The Hug Huddle next to Tower Bridge next Monday, this interactive and communal event being part of a new series of works.

Host Luke Blackall won’t be able to escape a hug as he talks to Semple about how Happy City, his new project, came about.

Tomorrow, London Live, 7pm

Dancer in the Dark

Bjork’s debut as a cinematic lead in Dancer in the Dark earned her the Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival, an Academy Award nomination, and a place in Oscar folklore after she arrived at the ceremony and laid an egg on the red carpet.

This brand of trippiness permeates the film which airs on London Live tonight at 10.15pm. Björk plays a poor Czech immigrant in Sixties America who is saving for an operation to save her failing eyesight — and as her condition worsens, she slips ever further into vivid daydreams, her imagination illuminated by Hollywood musicals and songs.

The film is essentially critical marmite, but whether you love it or hate it, it is certainly unforgettable.

London Live, 10.15pm

Catch Up TV

The End of the F****** World

Something of an upset at the Royal Television Society Awards this week, where The End of The F****** World (All 4) beat The Crown (Netflix) to the award for Best Drama series. An adaptation of Charles Forsman’s comic, it follows alienated teens James (Alex Lawther), who thinks he’s a psychopath, and loner Alyssa (Jessica Barden), on a murderous road trip.

All 4

Soap Box

EastEnders

EastEnders has made a habit of reviving long-lost characters of late, to the extent that even death does not provide a guaranteed escape from the grim environs of Walford. Tonight the cheerful floozy Kat Slater returns, wearing a leopard, despite her apparent demise in the spin-off show Redwater.

BBC1, 7.30pm, 9pm

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