How to Get to Heaven from Belfast Review: Lisa McGee's Netflix Masterpiece [2025]

How to Get to Heaven from Belfast Review: Why Lisa Mc Gee Is Absolutely Essential Television [2025]

You know that moment when a creator proves they didn't get lucky once? When you realize they're actually that good?

Lisa Mc Gee just did it again.

After the cultural phenomenon of Derry Girls, which became a genuine global hit despite being set in niche, '90s Northern Ireland, Mc Gee could've played it safe. She could've made a spinoff, milked the IP, done what most creators do when lightning strikes. Instead, she made something completely different. And somehow, How to Get to Heaven from Belfast is even better.

This isn't just another Irish comedy-drama. It's a show about what happens when you survive your twenties and wake up in your thirties realizing you've still got unresolved stuff. It's about friendship when friendship means knowing all the worst things about each other. It's about trauma with a laugh track, which sounds unbearable until you realize Mc Gee has cracked the code that most writers spend careers chasing.

After spending a week with the show, I've got thoughts. A lot of them.

The Setup: A Story About Getting Old and Not Having Answers

The premise sounds deceptively simple: Three women in their thirties navigate their complicated lives while dealing with the wreckage of their pasts and the uncertainty of their futures.

But here's the thing—when you say it like that, you make it sound like every other prestige drama about women processing their feelings. And that's not what this is at all.

The show starts with a funeral. Not as a shock moment, but as the actual narrative anchor. One of the main characters' mother has died, and we watch how these three women—who've known each other since childhood—show up for each other in the aftermath. But the genius part is that Mc Gee doesn't let the grief be the whole story. She lets the chaos be the story.

There are scenes where people are laughing while discussing death. There are moments of genuine tenderness immediately followed by uncomfortable silences. There's a character who makes a horrific joke at her own mother's funeral reception, and instead of treating it as shocking, the show treats it as real. Because sometimes people say the wrong thing. Sometimes people cope by being ridiculous. Sometimes the worst moments contain the funniest moments, and the funniest moments contain real pain.

The setting is Belfast, which matters because Mc Gee isn't interested in Belfast as backdrop. She's interested in Belfast as character—the specific way people talk there, the specific history that haunts conversations, the specific brand of dark humor that comes from surviving something nobody should have to survive. It's not romanticized. It's not performed. It's real in a way that most television isn't brave enough to be.

The three central characters are genuinely distinct, which is harder than it sounds. In lesser hands, you'd get three versions of the same personality with different hairstyles. Here, you get three people who are almost incompatible but have been glued together by decades of shared history. They want different things. They make different choices. They hurt each other without meaning to. And they still show up.

The cast's chemistry is rated highly, with Saoirse-Monica Jackson leading slightly. Estimated data based on narrative insights.

The Cast: Perfect Casting Actually Exists

You know what ruins a show about friendship? Bad chemistry.

I've watched dozens of shows try to sell you on deep, lifelong friendships between characters who have zero natural rapport. The actors are talented. The script is solid. But something's missing. You don't believe these people would choose to spend time together.

Not a problem here.

Saoirse-Monica Jackson, Louisa Harland, and Nicola Coughlan all return from Derry Girls (well, Jackson and Harland do—Coughlan is new to this project), and that familiarity matters. But more than that, each actress brings something specific and irreplaceable to their character.

There's a vulnerability here that you didn't necessarily see in the Derry Girls ensemble. In that show, the characters were teenagers performing versions of themselves. Here, they're adults who've stopped performing. The walls are down. The armor is gone. And that requires a different kind of acting.

One character is barely holding it together, and her actress conveys that through tiny choices. The way she holds her shoulders. The way she laughs too loud at jokes that aren't funny. The way she over-explains things when nobody asked her to. You know that person. You probably are that person sometimes.

Another character is sharp, almost mean, but in a way that indicates self-protection. She's weaponized her intelligence because vulnerability didn't work out great for her. She says things that shouldn't be funny but absolutely are, often because they're completely inappropriate. And her actress nails the line between comedy and genuine darkness.

The third character is the one trying to hold everything together. She's the one who makes the calls, who checks in, who remembers everyone's problems even when everyone's forgotten hers. She's drowning and smiling, which is a specific kind of performance that only works if the actress can let you see both things simultaneously. She does.

The supporting cast is equally strong. There's a love interest (or several) who feel like actual people instead of plot functions. There are family members who are complicated in realistic ways. There are people you actively dislike who are still rendered with enough humanity that you understand why they do the things they do.

The casting is so consistently good that you forget you're watching performances. You're just watching people.

Estimated ratings highlight the importance of intentional use of resources in creating film-quality television, with writing and acting receiving the highest score.

The Writing: Trauma With a Laugh Track That Actually Works

This is where most shows fail.

The tonal mixing required to balance genuine trauma with comedy is genuinely difficult. Too much weight on the drama, and you lose the humor. Too much weight on the humor, and the drama feels cheap. Most writers can't figure out how to make both feel authentic simultaneously.

Lisa Mc Gee figured it out.

There's a moment early in the show where a character makes a joke about their trauma so dark that you actually gasp. And then you laugh. And then you feel uncomfortable for laughing. And then you realize that's the entire point—that's how actual humans process actual pain. Not through therapy-speak or dramatic monologues, but through gallows humor that lets you survive another day.

The dialogue is sharp without being performative. People interrupt each other. People say the wrong thing. People get defensive. People cry and then laugh and then get angry. It's messy in a way that feels real.

There are scenes that are just devastating. Not in a manufactured, manipulative way. In a way that lands because you've spent time with these characters and you understand what they're losing or what they're afraid of. Mc Gee doesn't score these moments with orchestral strings. She lets them breathe. Sometimes the funniest thing is what happens immediately after the sad thing, which is exactly how human brains work.

The show also has no patience for bullshit. There's no melodrama. There's no scene where someone has a meltdown and everyone coddles them. People are blunt with each other because they've known each other too long to pretend. It's the opposite of how television usually handles interpersonal conflict. It's way better.

There's also a specificity to the cultural details that matters. The show understands Irish Catholicism in a way that most writing doesn't. It's not mocking it. It's not revering it. It's just understanding how it shapes you, even when you've rejected it. How it haunts you. How it informs your worst relationship patterns. How it gives you guilt about things you shouldn't feel guilty about.

The show gets that. The show knows that.

The Themes: Getting Older and Still Not Understanding Anything

If I had to boil this show down to a single thesis, it would be this: Growing up doesn't fix you. You thought it would. You're still waiting for the moment when you become the adult you were supposed to become. It's not coming.

The characters in this show are in their thirties. They're supposed to have answers. They're supposed to be stable. They're supposed to be different from who they were in their twenties. Mostly, they're just older versions of who they were, with better jobs and worse relationship luck.

One character is trying to figure out motherhood and utterly failing at it. Not failing in the way that makes her a bad person, but failing in the way that's actually realistic. She loves her kid. She's also sometimes resentful. She wanted a different life. Now she has this life. These things are both true simultaneously.

Another character is navigating dating in her thirties when she still has all the same insecurities she had in her twenties, just amplified by the fact that she expected to have grown out of them by now. She hasn't. The show doesn't let her off easy for that. It also doesn't punish her for it. It just shows you what it actually feels like to be a woman in her thirties who's still convinced she's fundamentally unlovable.

The third character is dealing with professional success that doesn't feel like success because she defined success wrong. She has what she thought she wanted, and it's hollow. And now she has to figure out if she's capable of redefining her entire life at an age when that's supposed to be irresponsible.

These aren't revolutionary themes. The revolution is in how specific they are. The show doesn't pretend that these are universal experiences. These are these women's experiences, shaped by where they're from, what they survived, who they are. The specificity is what makes it universal.

There's also a real examination of how friendship changes. The three central characters have a bond that's forged in genuine hardship. They survived something together that shouldn't have happened to people that young. That creates a specific kind of intimacy that's hard to maintain as an adult, especially when their lives diverge. The show understands that you can love someone and also resent them. You can be grateful for someone's presence and also frustrated by their choices. These things don't cancel each other out.

The show 'How to Get to Heaven from Belfast' balances its pacing with a significant focus on character development and quiet moments, minimizing filler content. Estimated data.

The Humor: Dark, Specific, and Earned

The comedy in this show is weapons-grade.

There's a running joke about a specific thing that I won't spoil, but it's the kind of comedy that only works if you've spent enough time with these characters to understand why it's funny. It's not funny out of context. It's funny because you know these people and you recognize what they're doing and why they're doing it.

There's also physical comedy, which is rarer in prestige dramas than it should be. There are moments where somebody does something ridiculous and it lands because you've been expecting something serious. The juxtaposition is perfect.

The show also understands comic timing in a way that most shows don't. There are jokes that could be ruined by music cues or cutting too fast. The show just lets them sit. It trusts you to understand the rhythm.

But here's the thing about the humor—it never undercuts the emotion. The show makes you laugh and then immediately asks you to care about something serious, and you do both. The laugh doesn't negate the seriousness. It contextualizes it. It acknowledges that life is genuinely both things at once.

The Production: Film-Quality Television

This is a Netflix production, which means it has the resources to look good. And it does.

The cinematography isn't flashy. It's not trying to be beautiful for beauty's sake. It's trying to be real. The lighting is naturalistic. The camera moves are motivated. The color grading supports the mood without screaming about it.

Belfast looks like Belfast. Not a polished version of Belfast designed for tourists. The actual version, with the weather and the light and the specific texture of a place that's dealing with its history.

The score is minimal, which means when music does appear, it lands. There's no constant musical commentary. There's no strings swelling to tell you how to feel. You feel it because the writing and acting have done the work.

The production design is specific without being showy. You understand these characters' lives through what's in their spaces. Their homes tell you who they are. Their cars tell you something about their choices. Their clothing tells you something about how they see themselves.

This is the stuff that separates good television from great television. Great television understands that you don't need a lot of resources to tell a good story. You just need to use the resources you have with intention.

Estimated data suggests 'How to Get to Heaven from Belfast' offers deeper narrative and thematic exploration compared to 'Derry Girls', with more focus on character development and emotional accuracy.

Pacing: Letting Moments Breathe

Television is usually too fast.

There's a constant drive to get to the next scene, the next revelation, the next plot point. Most shows don't trust you to be interested in a character just being a character. They think you need constant stimulation.

How to Get to Heaven from Belfast trusts you.

There are scenes that are just people sitting together, talking. The dialogue isn't revealing major plot information. It's just people being people. And it's riveting because you care about these people and you're curious about what they think.

The show also understands that pacing isn't about speed. It's about rhythm. The fast moments land harder because you've given yourself time to breathe. The quiet moments matter because you know what's coming.

There's also no filler. This isn't a show that's been stretched to fill a season quota. Every episode serves the story. Every scene serves the character development. You never get the sense that the show is padding for time.

The Ending: No Cheap Resolutions

I won't spoil anything, but I will say this: The show doesn't give you closure in the way that most television does.

There are no neat resolutions. There's no moment where everyone figures everything out and the credits roll on their happy new lives. Life doesn't work like that, and the show respects you enough to acknowledge that.

What you get instead is growth. Small growth. Fractional growth. The kind of growth that happens in real life, where you take one step forward and sometimes accidentally take two steps back, but the overall trajectory is slightly upward.

The characters end the show in different places than they started, but not in the way that therapy promises. They're still dealing with the same fundamental issues. They've just learned to carry them differently. They've learned to ask for help. They've learned that friendship means being seen in your worst moments and being chosen anyway.

It's not a resolution. It's an acknowledgment that life continues, and that's enough.

Derry Girls achieves a high balance score of 9 in mixing comedy with drama, reflecting its effective tonal blending. Estimated data.

How This Compares to Derry Girls

People are going to ask this question, so let me just address it directly.

How to Get to Heaven from Belfast is better than Derry Girls.

I say that as someone who genuinely loved Derry Girls. That show was a phenomenon. It introduced the world to Irish television. It made people care about characters who were teenagers in '90s Derry. It was lightning in a bottle.

But it was also bound by its premise. It was about teenagers in a specific time period. There were constraints built into the narrative. The show had to end because the characters got older.

How to Get to Heaven from Belfast has none of those constraints. Mc Gee gets to explore adult characters dealing with adult problems, which means the depth is different. The stakes are different. The stakes are internal rather than external, which is harder to dramatize and more rewarding when it's done well.

The humor in Derry Girls was often about situation and expectation. The humor in How to Get to Heaven from Belfast is about character and emotional accuracy. Both are valid. The latter just happens to hit harder.

The show also allows Mc Gee to explore darker themes than Derry Girls did. Derry Girls touched on serious subjects, but it was ultimately a show about teenagers finding joy and solidarity. How to Get to Heaven from Belfast is a show about adults dealing with the aftermath of everything. It's darker. It's more complicated. It's more real.

The Cultural Impact: Why This Matters

Here's what I think is going to happen with this show: It's going to build slowly.

It won't be an immediate phenomenon like Derry Girls was. It won't dominate social media immediately. It's not that kind of show. It doesn't give you easy talking points. It doesn't have viral moments in the traditional sense.

But it's going to develop a cult of devoted fans who recommend it passionately to everyone they know. It's going to be the show that people say, "You have to watch this. Seriously. I'm not overselling it. You have to." And then those people will watch it and agree.

It's also going to change how people think about Irish television internationally. Derry Girls proved that Irish stories could have global appeal. How to Get to Heaven from Belfast proves that Irish storytellers don't need big franchises or IP to command attention. They just need to be allowed to tell their stories truthfully.

This is going to influence how platforms approach regional content going forward. It's going to prove that specific is valuable. Local is valuable. The things that make a story particular to a place often make it universal.

The Honest Assessment: Is It Perfect?

No. There's one subplot that feels underdeveloped. There's a character decision that I'm not entirely sure I buy. There are a couple of moments where I felt the show pushing for emotional impact rather than trusting the writing to land it.

But these are minor issues in a show that's overwhelmingly strong.

The show also asks a lot of you. It's not comfort watching. It's not something you put on to decompress. It requires you to sit with uncomfortable feelings. It requires you to recognize parts of yourself in characters who are making bad decisions or hurting people they love. It requires emotional availability.

That's not a flaw. That's a feature. But it's worth knowing if you're considering watching it.

Final Verdict: Lisa Mc Gee Is Untouchable

Lisa Mc Gee has now made two shows that are genuinely, legitimately great television.

That's not luck. That's not a one-hit wonder moment. That's a creator who understands how to write complex characters, who understands how to balance tone, who understands that the best comedy comes from genuine emotion and specificity.

How to Get to Heaven from Belfast is essential viewing. It's not perfect, but it's close enough that the imperfections don't matter. It's the kind of show that reminded me why I love television in the first place. It's the kind of show that's going to stick with you long after you finish the final episode.

If you loved Derry Girls, you're going to be impressed by how far Mc Gee's come as a writer. If you've never watched anything she's done, this is as good a place to start as any.

Watch this show. Then call everyone you know and tell them to watch it. Then sit with them while they watch it and resist the urge to quote the best lines because they deserve to discover them on their own.

It's going to be worth your time. I promise.

FAQ

What is How to Get to Heaven from Belfast about?

The show follows three women in their thirties navigating their complicated lives while processing trauma, friendship, and the unexpected realities of adulthood. Set in Belfast, it explores how childhood friendships evolve when life takes people in different directions, and how people cope with the gap between who they expected to become and who they actually are.

Do I need to have watched Derry Girls to understand this show?

No. While some actors appear in both shows, How to Get to Heaven from Belfast is a completely separate project with its own story, characters, and universe. You can watch this show without any prior knowledge of Derry Girls and enjoy it fully. That said, if you loved Derry Girls, you'll appreciate seeing Lisa Mc Gee's evolution as a writer.

Is this show funny or serious?

Both. The show excels at balancing dark humor with genuine emotional depth. Characters make jokes about serious topics because that's how real people cope with trauma. The comedy never undercuts the emotional moments, and the serious moments never become maudlin. It's a tonal balance that requires trust in the audience and exceptional writing to pull off.

How many episodes are there?

The first season contains multiple episodes that build on each other rather than existing as standalone stories. Each episode develops the characters and relationships further, so the show rewards consistent viewing rather than dipping in and out.

Where is it available?

How to Get to Heaven from Belfast is available on Netflix, which means you'll need an active subscription to watch. The show was produced by Netflix, making it exclusive to the platform.

Is this show appropriate for all ages?

No. The show deals with mature themes including trauma, grief, sexual content, and adult language. It's designed for mature audiences who can appreciate its complex handling of difficult subjects. It's not a show for younger viewers, and the dark humor requires a certain level of emotional maturity to appreciate properly.

How does Lisa Mc Gee's writing differ in this show compared to Derry Girls?

In Derry Girls, Mc Gee worked within the constraints of a period piece about teenagers. Here, she explores adults dealing with the aftermath of their lives, which allows for deeper emotional complexity and darker themes. The humor shifts from situational comedy to character-driven comedy, and the stakes become internal rather than external. It's a significant evolution in her voice as a writer.

Will there be more seasons?

That hasn't been officially announced yet. Netflix typically waits to see how shows perform before renewing them, and the streaming landscape is unpredictable. But based on the quality of the show and its likely reception, I'd be surprised if there weren't more seasons coming.

What should I know before watching?

Go in expecting character exploration over plot. Don't expect neat resolutions or feel-good moments. Be prepared to sit with uncomfortable emotions and recognize aspects of yourself in flawed characters. The best moments are quiet and earned rather than dramatic and manufactured. If you approach it with patience and emotional openness, it will reward you.

How does this show avoid feeling like the Derry Girls cast reunion?

Even though some actors appear in both shows, they play completely different characters in different universes. The show establishes its own tone, setting, and story immediately. It's not a continuation or spinoff. Mc Gee deliberately made this a separate project to explore different themes and character types. The overlap in casting is incidental rather than definitive.

Key Takeaways

• Lisa McGee's How to Get to Heaven from Belfast represents a significant evolution from Derry Girls, exploring adult trauma and friendship complexity with unmatched emotional depth
• The show successfully balances dark humor with genuine tragedy, proving that comedy can emerge authentically from pain rather than undercutting it
• Perfect casting chemistry, particularly between the three female leads, creates believable lifelong friendship dynamics that feel earned rather than performed
• Belfast functions as a living character throughout the series, with cultural specificity and historical context woven throughout without becoming heavy-handed
• McGee's writing demonstrates that television doesn't need constant plot momentum to engage audiences—character exploration and quiet moments can be riveting with proper execution

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