Derry Girls is a brand new six-part comedy from acclaimed writer Lisa McGee who mines her own experiences to create a candid, one-of-a-kind, family-centred comedy set against the spectre of The Troubles in Northern Ireland. It’s the early 90s and the first day of a new school term and a terrible start for 16-year-old Erin (Saoirse-Monica Jackson) as she wakes up to find her cousin Orla (Louisa Harland) reading her diary. Not so great for everyone else either as Granda Joe (Ian McElhinney) announces there’s a bomb on the bridge.
The Quinn family are distraught – it’s a huge inconvenience and Aunt Sarah (Kathy Kiera Clarke) may not even be able to get to her sunbed session. Erin and Orla head to school picking up their friends Clare (Nicola Coughlan), who’s doing a sponsored fast for Ethiopia, and Michelle (Jamie-Lee O’Donnell), who has her cousin James (Dylan Llewellyn) in tow. James is over from England and will be joining them at Our Lady Immaculate Girls School amid concerns he’d get beaten up at the boys’ school ‘because of the English thing…’
Writer: Lisa McGee
Dir: Michael Lennox
Exec Prods: Caroline Leddy, Liz Lewin, Lisa McGee, Jimmy Mulville
Prod: Catherine Gosling Fuller
Prod Co: Hat Trick (DG) Ltd
Derry Girls Season 1 Episode 1 (of 6) airs Thursday 4 January 2018 from 10.00pm-10.30pm on Channel 4.