Series 1 Overview:
Set in Derry Northern Ireland in the 1990s, Derry Girls is a candid, one-of-a-kind comedy about what it’s like to be a teenage girl living amongst conflict. It’s a warm, laugh out loud funny and honest look at the lives of an ordinary family living through the Troubles in the early nineties.
16-year-old Erin Quinn (Saoirse Monica Jackson) lives with her uncompromising mother (Tara Lynne O’Neill), her long-suffering father (Tommy Tiernan) and the fearsome Granda Joe (Ian McElhinney), a man whose love for his daughters and granddaughters is surpassed only by his contempt for his son-in-law. It’s the early 90s, and Erin is used to seeing her country on the nightly news and speaking in acronyms (The IRA, The UDA, The RUC). This is a time of armed police in armoured Land Rovers and British Army check points. But it’s also the time of Murder She Wrote, The Cranberries, MJ and Lisa Marie, Doc Martens, bomber jackets, The X Files, Nirvana and Wayne’s World. And while The Troubles may hang over her home town, Erin has troubles of her own…
Terrible with boys and convinced nobody understands her, Erin would love to be a rebel, and sometimes flirts with the idea of standing up to those in authority, like her Principal – the eternally unimpressed Sister Michael (Siobhan McSweeney), or divorcing her parents, à la Macaulay Culkin, but she never quite has the nerve. She has grand ambitions to become a famous writer and thinks of herself as thoroughly liberal and worldly, yet she’s never ventured further than Buncrana…
The bane of Erin’s existence is her 15-year-old cousin Orla McCool (Louisa Harland) who lives next door with her ditzy mother Sarah (Kathy Kiera Clarke). Whimsical, unpredictable Orla orbits her own planet and thinks nothing of reading her cousin’s diary or borrowing her knickers. Equally responsible for Erin’s inability to better herself are her two best friends – Clare Devlin (Nicola Coughlan), clever, ambitious and, when faced with Sister Michael, an enthusiastic grass, and Michelle Mallon (Jamie-Lee O’Donnell), mouthy, man-hungry and unashamedly offensive. Last and, as far as the girls are concerned, very much least, is Michelle’s cousin James (Dylan Llewellyn) – “The English Fella”- who’s just moved to Derry and is the ultimate outsider. Amid concerns that his English accent may cause trouble for him at the boys’ school, James is forced to attend the all-girl Our Lady Immaculate College. But as he quickly discovers, the boys’ school would have been a much easier ride.
Warm, funny and honest, Derry Girls takes a look at the everyday lives of ordinary people living in extraordinary times.
Produced by Hat Trick Productions in association with Northern Ireland Screen.
EPISODE 1
First day of a new term and a terrible start for Erin as she wakes up to find her cousin Orla reading her diary. Not so great for everyone else either as Granda Joe announces there’s a bomb on the bridge. The Quinn family are distraught, this is a huge inconvenience, Aunt Sarah may not even be able to get to her sun bed session.
Erin and Orla head to school picking up their friends Clare (who’s doing a sponsored fast for Ethiopia) and Michelle, who has her cousin James in tow. James is over from England and will be joining them at Our Lady Immaculate Girls school amid concerns he’d get beaten up at the boys school “because of the English thing…”
Things take a more positive turn when Erin gets invited to David Donnelly’s (“THE David Donnelly!”) gig that evening. But when Michelle picks a fight with the deceptively innocent looking ‘Wee Tina’ then gives the finger to school prefect Jenny Joyce they all land in detention putting paid to Erin’s dreams of a romantic liaison. And this is where the real trouble begins…they soon find themselves with a dead nun on their hands…how they hell are they going to explain this to their parents?