How to Get to Heaven from Belfast

The Ghosts We Grow Into

It feels like every successful comedy writer eventually has to write a murder. Donald Glover went for serial killers in *Swarm*, Phoebe Waller-Bridge did *Killing Eve*, and now Lisa McGee—who gave us the brilliant *Derry Girls*—has buried a body. Well, sort of. That’s the joke at the heart of *How to Get to Heaven from Belfast*, a Netflix show that starts as a fast-paced comedy before things get dark.



We meet three childhood friends in their late thirties, each dealing with their own brand of mid-life crisis. Saoirse (Roisin Gallagher) is a messy writer; Robyn (Sinéad Keenan) is a stressed-out mom; Dara (Caoilfhionn Dunne) is a quiet carer. They get together in Donegal for the wake of their friend Greta, who supposedly killed herself. But McGee isn't making a sad reunion movie. She wants chaos. The camera uses a lot of weird angles and fish-eye lenses, making the Irish hills look more like a trap than a postcard.



You can see the show’s messy soul in the scene where they walk up to Greta’s coffin. The timing is like musical theater. They’re trading insults that are actually terms of endearment, their bodies stiff with fear. Then they look inside. The silence before they realize it’s not Greta in the box is held just a second too long. It’s funny because it’s so awkward. Sinéad Keenan is amazing here—she plays Robyn as a woman who’s been holding back a scream for years. Her whole jaw looks like it’s about to snap from the tension.



I’m not sure the second half of the season really stays on the rails. Once the shock of the empty coffin passes, the plot gets tangled up in a conspiracy about something called the Evaporation Society. Saloni Gajjar at *Paste Magazine* was right when she said it "unevenly juggles being both a poignant dramedy and a sinister whodunit". The gears start to grind in the later episodes, and the bigger the mystery gets, the less interesting it feels.

But I still couldn’t stop watching. Even when the plot gets messy, the friendship between the women feels real. McGee gets that the friends you make when you're young never really leave you; they just change, carrying the weight of all the people you used to be. It’s a bumpy ride, but a very human one.