How to Get to Heaven From Belfast: A Frenetic, Funny Eight-Episode Thriller

Eight years after Derry Girls, Lisa McGee returns with How To Get To Heaven From Belfast, an eight-episode Netflix series that shifts from nostalgic comedy to a darker, comic thriller. Three friends in their late thirties—Dara (Caoilfhionn Dunne), Saoirse (Roisin Gallagher) and Robyn (Sinéad Keenan)—attend the wake of their estranged schoolfriend Greta (Natasha O’Keeffe).

At an empty, isolated wake Robyn, now a TV crime writer, notices the body may not be Greta’s, and the women set off across the Irish countryside to untangle what happened twenty years earlier. The series opens with a flashing sequence of fire, a shadowy figure and a satanic symbol before cutting into tight close-ups of the trio; that urgent energy rarely lets up across the season.

It mixes a whodunit and a stream of red herrings with farcical incidents—hangovers, uncanny family members, assassins and eccentric hotel owners—anchored by McGee’s dry, sarcastic wit.

belfast, lisa mcgee, derry girls, netflix, thriller, comedy, whodunit, caoilfhionn dunne, roisin gallagher, sinéad keenan