Lisa McGee, creator of the hit Channel 4 sitcom ‘Derry Girls’, has described her new Netflix comedy thriller ‘How To Get To Heaven From Belfast’ as “wish fulfilment”. The series follows three friends in their late 30s who embark on a mysterious odyssey across Ireland after receiving an email about the death of a childhood friend.
McGee told Deadline that she loves true crime and wanted to create a show about a mystery she would love to solve herself. The idea for the series partly came from a “creepy experience” at her old school, which she visited with her husband and found overgrown and abandoned, reminiscent of a “zombie apocalypse”.
The writer began developing the pilot before the final season of ‘Derry Girls’ had even filmed, explaining that she needed to write something different. “I needed [the Derry Girls characters] to stop talking in my head,” she said. Despite the larger budget and scale of the Netflix series, McGee found writing a sitcom more challenging, as it required maintaining character stasis.
For the first time, McGee used a writers’ room on ‘How To Get To Heaven’, which she said she enjoyed and would prefer for future projects. The cast includes Roisin Gallagher, Sinéad Keenan and Caoilfhionn Dunne, whom McGee praised for their “ensemble chemistry”. The series explores themes of managing the past and ghosts, influenced by McGee’s own upbringing during the Troubles.
