After the success of more conventional sitcom Derry Girls, writer Lisa McGee has taken the energy and zip of the schooldays comedy and applied it to a group of adult women along with a mystery plot to keep you hooked. When schoolfriend Greta is dead a trio of old chums reunite for the wake in Ireland and things quickly spin off from there.
Robyn (Sinéad Keenan) is a stressed mum, Dara (Caoilfhionn Dunne) has an elderly parent to look after and Saoirse (Roísín Gallagher) is a top TV writer of a hit crime show. The trio were all once close friends, but something happened – big clue, there's a flashback of a blazing fire at the start – that they've never talked about ever since. Oh, and by the way, is Greta really dead?
Before you can say Scooby Doo they are heading off to Ireland. Things are not looking good after the petrol car is filled with diesel and they break down in the middle of nowhere. But unlike anywhere in the real world ever a truck soon comes along complete with a dishy driver out of a Coke ad and sorts them out and they are towed to their destination.
McGee's script certainly zips along even if it is sometimes prone to cliche. At one point on the eve of the wake they are at a bar and say that they are certainly not going to get drunk that night. Sure enough the next scene sees them banging down shots and raving on the dancefloor. Touchingly the scene cuts between their adult selves and their innocent childhood selves doing the same moves.
There is something innately charming about How To Get to Heaven From Belfast. This is smalltown Ireland to the max. The hunk who fixed their breakdown is also the local policeman. It looks like there might be a romantic frisson with one of the threesome at one point in the first episode when he turns up again, but he has actually returned to give them the bill for the repairs. But I wouldn't discount romance too.
Oh, and just when you think things can't get any more mad Ardal O'Hanlon pitches in as a hotelier with an illuminated bow tie.
How To Get to Heaven From Belfast is now streaming on Netflix.
Picture: Netflix.
