Series Review: “How to Get to Heaven from Belfast” takes Derry “Girls” to Dublin and Donegal along the Way

Here’s a delighftul weekend’s binge, a daft and darkly comic trip to the Emerald Isle that’s a lot cheaper than flying, with a lot more laughs than you’ll get from wrangling with DHS.

“How to Get to Heaven from Belfast” has a hint of Hitchcock, a dab of “Ab Fab” and a big fat dash of “Derry Girls.” It’s an “Only Murders in the Building” where the building or buildings have burned down and only “three Belfast eejits,” gal-pals since Catholic School, can get to the bottom of things.

Creator, principal writer and “Derry Girls” writer-creator Lisa McGee has turned out a cleverly cast, playfully-plotted Ireland-tweaking, Brit-bashing, Catholic Church-torching hoot.

And you’ll want to catch it with the subtitles on, as you won’t want to miss a single bit of the slangy craic or wisecracks, the Derry-accented digs and down and dirty witticisms.

“I was RIGHT! You doubted me like that lad…that fella from the BIBLE!”

“Peter?”

“PETER! You’re all DOUBTING Peters!”

Our four “separate but inseperable” friends met at Our Lady of Sorrows Catholic School. But only three — TV crime show creator Saoirse (Roism Gallagher), whose name her British co-workers never pronounce correctly, the eternally testy well-heeled mother of three Robyn (Sinéad Keenan) and gawky lesbian Dara (Caoilfhionn Dunne) — stuck together into their late ’30s.

Cryptic messages and the mysterious death of their classmate Greta (Natasha O’Keeffe) summon them all South, to tiny, coastal Knockdara, where Greta’s widowed Garda (police) inspector husband (Emmett J. Scanlan) has a creepy way of mourning her passing and Saoirse’s clumsy effort to put a photo of all of them together in the dead woman’s coffin reveals the truth — to her any way.

That’s not Greta’s corpse. The body has no rune/tattoo that Greta made all the girls share, way back when.

There was a “Big Bad” back in their school days. And over the eight episodes of the series, from Northern Ireland to Ireland, London to Portugal via a passing parade of character points of view, the surviving trio track and parse anagrams and their collective past (flashbacks) and other cryptic clues to find their still-living classmate.

“DNA doesn’t just wash off — like Catholicism!”

That’s with the Knockdara constable and part-time tow-truck driver Liam (Darragh Hand) who is sweet on Saoirse always three steps behind them. But the son of a man (Josh Finan has both roles) who disappeared in their youth is also sniffing around, trying to figure out the “Big Bad.”

Their odyssey is peppered with traps, narrow escapes and striking Irish settings — from TV studios and The Titanic Experience in Belfast to stone circles and tiny trails that pass for roads piercing famous passes (Mamore Gap) in Donegal, County Antrim and County Down.

Hitchcock references abound, and a few nods to “Derry Girls” pop up as we see them pursued by a “professional” something or other (“Commitments” alumna Bronagh Gallagher) and her bubbly ditz of an accomplice (Saoirse-Monica Jackson of “Derry Girls”).

We sample a score of Irish-flavored rock and timeworn pop and ballads, drop in on Ireland’s “The Late Late Show” with Patrick Kielty, the BAFTAS (the British “Oscars), and even hit Dublin on St. Patrick’s Day.

“Oh, fer feck’s sake! I’m not even wearin’ GREEN!”

It’s all in good, Derry-accented, foul-mouthed fun as Keenan stays in a fine fury, scene by scene, Gallagher just oozes menace and Jackson takes dizzy from dialogue — every sentence ends with “Babes” — to wardrobe, hair and pretty-in-pink Mini Cooper perfection. There’s a profane nun amidst a cast filled with oddballs, weirdos and the like, many blurting out what they really think of each other, Ireland, Northern Ireland, the Brits, Catholicism and every fresh wrinkle in the plot or mishap on their quest.

Consider this road trip the next best thing to an Irish vacation, an amusing send-up of too-many-things-Irish to count, from weather to wardrobe to “joined the IRA” jokes that never go out of style.

Rating: TV-MA, violence, profanity, smoking and suggestions of sex

Cast: Roisin Gallagher, Sinéad Keenan,
Caoilfhionn Dunne, Darragh Hand, Natasha O’Keeffe, Josh Finan, Saoirse-Monica Jackson, Emma Canning, Michelle Fairley and Bronagh Gallagher.

Credits: Created by Lisa McGee. A Netflix release.

Running time: eight episodes @50-59 minutes each

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About Roger Moore

Movie Critic, formerly with McClatchy-Tribune News Service, Orlando Sentinel, published in Spin Magazine, The World and now published here, Orlando Magazine, Autoweek Magazine
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