The Derry Girls Impact

In honour of the Derry Girls finally hitting Netflix I thought I would talk about the impact LisaMcGee's award winning show has had on not only me but the people around me too. There may be a few spoilers in this so please go watch the show first, and also you should 100% watch anyway because you are seriously missing out otherwise.

The Derry Girls Mural, Badger's Bar on Orchard Street, Derry

An interesting thing this series does is it takes the story of the troubles in Northern Ireland and tells it through the eyes of a group of teenagers, who do everything we would have done such as; getting up to no good, drinking and enjoying their lives despite the chaos around them. It takes a time in Irish history that is brushed over so easily in today's media and makes it feel real for the generations that didn't experience it. As a girl from the Republic of Ireland who was only young when the Troubles officially ended i can never speak on the experiences people had or the tension and violence that still exist today, but from listening to stories from people I do know from that area, I understand the need to have their story told.

Making a show like this is ambitious a show set in this time may not always land with audiences, but my god the Derry Girls not only lands but ticks every box. The characters in this show are all iconic in their own right and bring so much to every scene. Michelle's firey need to experience life and witty insults, Clare's nervous good girl side, James' lack of understanding of Irish life but willingness to go along with it anyway, Orla's unique love for life and Erin's classic teenage awkwardness leads everyone watching to fall for the show as they can see themselves in it. These characters provide a representation Irish teenagers rarely see on television. Lisa McGee has also created strong secondary characters that create the strong family bonds that often exist in Ireland. The one-liners and Irish quips left me laughing out loud at every episode. McGee's strong plot lines lead to this show taking on topics like Clare's coming out journey which was taken on with such grace. Nicola Coughlan (Clare) said in a podcast with Eoghan McDermott that they were worried they wouldn't do this story line justice and would offend people of the LGBTQ+ community but instead received a massive amount of support. The subtlety of the gang wearing a rainbow pin in every episode of season two shows the continued support of their friend without the constant need to call out her sexuality or use her as a token character.

The Derry Girls shows our generation the strength we possess and that even in times of turmoil we carry on. It shows that LGBTQ+ characters don't have to have their sexuality be their only character trait. The show demonstrates the power of friendship and that being a Derry Girl is a state of mind. McGee used the mirroring technique in the last episode of the first season to show the innocence of the girls dancing around the school stages vs the death and disaster of the troubles. The second season welcomed the mirror again as we saw the girls end up in a full Carrie situation while peace is announced across the North. The mirrors shows that while politics surrounds us it doesn't have to define us, that we can be ourselves and live our own lives because if we focused solely on the politics in the world we would live under a constant cloud of darkness. We don't have long on this earth may as well throw caution to the wind, lie to our parents and hop on that bus to see Take That.

I'm grateful to Lisa McGee who brought this show into my life, to the characters who bonded my friends and I and allowed us to feel like we are apart of something special, like we are all our own versions of Derry Girls.