Derry-born stage and screenwriter Lisa McGee never originally set out to write about the late 20th century period of conflict between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. Yet when developing her hit comedy series “Derry Girls,” which is set in the city during the 1990s, she soon realized she couldn’t just ignore the Troubles. “I just wanted to write about me and my friends, and the way we behaved in school, leave the Troubles out of it,” she explained in an interview. “But that didn’t feel truthful … because I don’t have an experience without it.”
Of course, with the decision to include the subject matter came the responsibility to not trivialize it. McGee decided that whilst her characters — a group of four teenaged girls and one boy — didn’t necessarily have to take certain situations seriously, the writing did. “The army, for example, don’t do any jokes in the show. If they were cracking gags it would diminish things; it would feel unreal. To ground the world, you have to make its threats really real.”
McGee knew since she was a child that she wanted to be a writer, citing Angela Lansbury’s mystery writer Jessica Fletcher in “Murder, She Wrote” as an early influence. A degree in English and Drama at Queen’s University, Belfast was followed by a role as Writer on Attachment at the National Theatre in London, which allowed her the time and freedom to write plays. In 2007, she won the Stewart Parker Trust New Playwright Bursary for her play “Girls and Dolls,” set in Derry in 1980, which enjoyed a revival last year. A move into TV writing saw her working on the BAFTA-winning supernatural series “Being Human,” before creating her own series “Raw,” and mini-series “London Irish.”
The latter, about a group of Irish twenty-somethings living in London gave her the confidence to think that audiences would be interested in a show about Northern Ireland. And so she found herself writing “Derry Girls” while pregnant with her first child. She mused in an interview with Irish press, “I think it was the only thing I could have written at that time, because it was joyful to reminisce and try to make people laugh. If I had been writing a hard-hitting murder story, I wouldn’t have been in the right frame of mind.”
Produced by the UK’s Channel 4 and available internationally on Netflix, “Derry Girls” has been met with wide acclaim, with its second installment airing earlier this summer. Still, McGee initially wasn’t certain that audiences would rush to watch it. “A lot of stuff about Northern Ireland is very male … and very leather-jacketed,” she commented. “I did worry when I wrote it that people wouldn’t watch it because there were so many female characters.” Yet what sets McGee’s teenage girls apart from so many others found in film and television is just how real they feel. “I wanted my characters to be complete disasters because I think that’s what most teenage girls feel like,” she’s explained.
McGee has commented on the need for studios to nurture more female writing talent, and develop more female-led comedy, pointing out that writing comedy is a skill, not just a side hobby for drama writers to sometimes indulge in. Indeed, dealing with such potentially sensitive subject material as she does in “Derry Girls,” getting the tonal balance right was something McGee wrestled with. “You have to write whatever’s best or whatever’s funny and truthful, and think ‘Future Lisa will worry about the backlash if it doesn’t work’,” she has said. “Thankfully everyone just got the joke, and appreciated the tone of it. And because the lines were being said by characters who are teenage girls, people were all the more accepting of it, because they’re just kids.”
The care put into crafting the tone of the series, developing the characters, and mining the specificity of her own lived experience of growing up in Derry has paid off, with McGee winning the British Screenwriters’ Award for Best Comedy Writing on Television in 2018, and the show being renewed for a third series. McGee is now also developing a new television project, psychological thriller “The Deceived,” with her husband Tobias Beer.
“Derry Girls” will return for a third season, date TBA. Seasons 1 and 2 are available on Netflix in the US, and on Channel 4 in the UK.
Previously on Writer to Watch…
Writer to Watch: Sofia Alvarez of the “To All the Boys” Films
Grace Nkenge Edwards of “Insecure” and MTV’s New “Daria” Spinoff
Katie Silberman of “Booksmart” and “Set It Up”
“Insecure” Scribe Amy Aniobi
Marquita Robinson of “GLOW” and “You’re the Worst”
“The Little Drummer Girl’s” Claire Wilson
“Speechless” and “Friends from College” Scribe Broti Gupta
Sierra Teller Ornelas of “Superstore”
“Sierra Burgess Is a Loser” Scribe Lindsay Beer
“Atlanta” Emmy Nominee Stefani Robinson
