For the protagonists it is more dramatic that their faces are filled with pimples or not being able to go to a concert than a bomb warning on a bridge
Starting a series to the rhythm of The Cranberries and three kids crossing out ‘London’ from the ‘Welcome to Londonderry’ sign while an English army vehicle drives past them without realizing it already puts us in a situation: Northern Ireland, the 90s and the Troubles, so aptly analyzed by Patrick Radden Keefe in his book ‘Say Nothing’. But soon we will realize that the main drawback of Derry is not the armed conflict, but the fact that it is a small and suffocating place: “The problem with living in Derry is that there is nowhere to hide. Everyone knows everyone and they know everything about everyone. It is the beginning of the diary of Erin Quinn, one of the adolescent protagonists of ‘Derry Girls’. And for her and her gang it’s more dramatic that their faces are filled with pimples or not being able to go to a concert than a bomb warning on a bridge; that’s just an inconvenience that prevents them from getting to school on time. Internalizing the conflict is the only way to survive barbarism.
Lisa McGee, creator of the series and born and raised in Derry, knows what she’s talking about. That is why he masterfully describes a group of clumsy kids who pass the age of the turkey in the middle of the conflict in Northern Ireland: Erin, the intense one with a rubber face (no more faces can be made per sentence), her wacky cousin Orla, the obedient and studious Clare, Michelle, a loose-tongued choni with huge earrings and James, her cousin, who ends up in the girls’ school so they don’t beat him up in the boys’ institute for being English. ‘Derry Girls’ is the hilarious Irish version of ‘Las Niñas’, by Pilar Palomero.
And if there are kids who go to a Catholic school, there is family and there are nuns, of course: on the one hand, Erin’s parents, grandfather and aunt, all as crazy as her and, on the other, Sister Michael, so fed up of life as well as students (“If anyone is feeling anxious, worried, or maybe just wants to chat, please don’t come crying to me”) and with more razor blades to the brain than Billy Wilder.
With a soundtrack full of great pop hits that you can’t stop humming (in addition to The Cranberrys, throughout its three seasons we listened to Genesis, The The, Take That, The Proclaimers, Fatboy Slim, Spice Girls or Los del Río and his ‘Macarena’), the series is a festival of adolescent nostalgia that does not fall into the sentimental thanks to its witty and fast dialogues, characters drawn with pen (not caricatured), crazy situations and an acid and Kaffir humor.
Introduce violence naturally
But, in addition, ‘Derry Girls’ achieves something very difficult: introduce the violence that is experienced at that time in a natural, organic way, either through the daily inconveniences that an armed situation brings, through the news on the radio and television (although the real problem for Erin’s family when their TV breaks is not being able to watch the episode of ‘Coronation Street’) or the songs: ‘Zombie’, the song The Cranberries composed inspired by the death of two children in the IRA attack in Warrington in 1993, sounds at the end of the second season while the protagonists appear bathed in blood, in a sort of imitation of ‘Carrie’.
And if the first two seasons are a delight, the third and last is not far behind. Full of cameos and stellar performances, such as those by Liam Neeson or Damien Molony, an actor we know from ‘Being Human’ and from the stupendous ‘Crashing’ (with a pre-‘Fleabag’ Phoebe Waller-Bridge), the season takes place during the peace process talks, just the time when the girls are waiting for the results of their high school final exam. And those last seven episodes lead us to a great, huge final chapter that thrills to the bone, whether you were born in Northern Ireland or Orejilla del Sordete. We know that what is local can be universal since Don Quixote. Now, too, for ‘Derry Girls’.
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