Greta burned a church as a child

SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers from ‘How to Get to Heaven From Belfast’, streaming now on Netflix.

It starts, like so many things in Irish life, with a wake.

Lisa McGee has wanted to take on the murder mystery genre for years. She just knew she couldn’t do it justice. “I was such a big fan of ‘Murder, She Wrote,’” says the creator of “Derry Girls,” whose semi-autobiographical Troubles-era sitcom became a global phenomenon by refusing to soften its Northern Irish idiosyncrasies.

‘How to Get to Heaven From Belfast’ is her answer – an eight-episode Netflix comedy-mystery and her first major project since ‘Derry Girls’ wrapped in 2022. Three childhood best friends, Saoirse (Roisin Gallagher), Robyn (Sinéad Keenan) and Dara (Caoilfhionn Dunne), are called to rural County Donegal after learning of the death of their estranged fourth, Greta (Natasha O’Keeffe). Only maybe Greta isn’t dead. And Greta, it turns out, has secrets dating back to a childhood religious commune, an abusive leader, and a church that burned down with children inside.

The three women are not equipped to handle all of this. They deal with it anyway: bad, loud and somehow hilarious. They are locked in a confessional, blow up a boat and end up in an underground women’s relocation network run by a quasi-murderer with a flexible attitude towards killing men. Though the darkness of the material never overwhelms the comedy, a balance McGee has deliberately calibrated – less interested in the whodunit than the women who rumble through it. “I thought the idea of ​​finding almost the worst people to solve this problem was really funny,” she says Variety.

Below, McGee explains the making of ‘How to Get to Heaven From Belfast’, from the beginnings of a murder mystery to the unlikely heroes at its heart.

This show has a lot to offer in terms of genre. How do you describe what the show actually is?

I recently saw someone describe it as a murder mystery, but then added, “Has there been a murder at all?” – which I thought was pretty good. The deaths are not your classic murders. I call it a comedy mystery because it’s a mix of those two tones. What I always hoped was that people would try to piece together a puzzle while laughing. That was my ambition there.

You said you wanted to make your version of “Murder, She Wrote,” but with three women who are no good at it. Why did incompetence feel like the right way in?

Those old mystery shows must have been incredibly difficult to write – so technical. I’ve always wanted to give it a try since I was such a big fan of ‘Murder, She Wrote’. But I knew I had to do it my way. My tone is fast and chaotic, Irish and funny. So the idea of ​​finding almost the worst people to solve this problem was really funny to me. They will get there eventually, but they really have to learn to trust their instincts. I just loved the idea of ​​life getting in the way: you’re trying to be Jessica Fletcher, but you also have to plan your kid’s birthday party.

The show taps into the true crime obsession that has dominated the past decade, and its audience is predominantly female. Why do you think that is so?

That’s the question, isn’t it? I don’t know why women are so fascinated by it, and I talk about it a lot with my friends. This is so depressing, but I wonder if this is because most crimes happen to women. So we try to find out as much as we can about what’s out there. No surprises for us if we know all the scary things that could possibly happen. That’s the depressing approach.

Another perspective could be that women think they can arrange everything. Like, “I could fix it.” My friends and I think we can solve these things, but that’s absolutely not possible. We’d be as bad as the guards on this show. But in my experience, the biggest true crime fans I know are all my girlfriends.

You joke that you and your friends think you can figure these things out – are Saoirse, Robyn and Dara based on your real friends?

They are very much based on my real life friendship group, yes. I have a very glamorous mother of four who is very outspoken and doesn’t put up with any nonsense – that’s Robyn. And I have a much gentler, kinder friend who cares for people, likes to take care of people, and is also a bit eccentric – that’s Dara. We do make these trips together. We haven’t had to solve a murder yet, but we live in hope.

And Saoirse – the television writer – is she you?

She was definitely a way in. I could understand her frustrations with her career and her chaotic approach to life. But she’s a hundred times more interesting than me; she has a lot more to do. There’s a point where she stops being me and becomes her own thing. But it was the way I could get my head around the story.

Greta is the central mystery, but she is barely present; we experience it almost entirely through the memories of others. Was it a challenge to get the audience interested in someone who is essentially absent?

Having Natasha O’Keeffe play her got a lot of that work done. She had to sell everything without saying anything. The three main characters are crazy – jumping out of lighthouses and blowing up boats – and then we cut to Greta and she’s very quiet. All that trauma is in her veins. I tried to drip-feed information so that the audience would remain curious and maybe understand by the end why she did what she did.

That backstory – Greta accidentally burns down a church with children inside – is truly horrifying. How did you decide that a comedy-mystery could handle that level of darkness?

You just have to try it. A lot of the page is about what you leave out and what you suggest. Some sentences you simply can’t write because the tone doesn’t appeal to them. The heavy stuff was about saying as little as possible, giving the audience just enough information to fill in the gaps. And then we took out some jokes that were too close to that material because they hid the seriousness of the story. A lot was fixed during the edit. Using those visual flashes helped: you see something, but don’t necessarily hear it in dialogue. It was a real puzzle.

And how do you calibrate the tonal shift from comedy to darkness without giving the audience whiplash?

I think it largely depends on performance. These three actors – Roisin, Sinéad and Caoilfhionn – have incredible ensemble chemistry. It’s so hard as an actor to walk that line and go from the really stupid stuff to the more emotional stuff. They sell everything. They sell the stupid bits and they sell the really sad bits. That’s what makes the tone work.

The underground relocation plan – essentially a secret witness protection program – is a wild plot element. Until the last ten minutes, I thought Booker and Feeney were bad. Where did the idea for the plan come from, and what prompted you to give them redemption?

I felt like I didn’t want anyone to be really bad, or anyone to be really good. I wanted you to think about Booker [Bronagh Gallagher] is psychotic at first – she seems like an assassin. But then you realize that she’s actually part of this organization that’s trying to help women, just in a psychotic way, in crazy ways. She has no big problem killing people when necessary, especially if she has to kill a man. But she really believed in what that organization wanted to do: help women start a new life. It became so damaged and eroded over time. I really liked that she believed in something – and that sometimes it can be very dangerous to believe in something very difficult.

Saoirse-Monica Jackson, who plays Erin in “Derry Girls,” appears as a bubblegum pink assassin whose costumes become more elaborate with each scene. How did that casting happen?

Booker needed a sidekick: someone who would be willing to throw them out the window of a car while it was still moving. I kept thinking about this quirky blonde, like Gwen Stefani actually, and then I thought: Saoirse-Monica. Simply the worst possible person to put next to Booker. She immediately agreed. I don’t think she would have even read it. And then costume designer Kathy Prior just kept throwing more at it, and it just kept getting funnier.

You wrote ‘Derry Girls’ all by yourself. This time you had a writers’ room. What has changed?

I don’t think I would ever want to do anything alone again. “Derry Girls” was so personal that it would have been complicated to explain to other writers. But it’s just better to have smart people to turn to for help. It’s eight o’clock television. You’re constantly trying to change the story. My husband is one of the writers and he is very good at horror, which is not my strength. Some writers brought real emotional intelligence to the younger characters. And then Brona: there is no situation too crazy for Brona. She did everything they were locked in the confessional. You need a specialist for everything.

The show moved from Channel 4 to Netflix around the time of the writers’ strike. What was that transition like?

Netflix is ​​great: they want to support the writer’s vision and help it reach the widest audience possible. But honestly, it felt the same because my team hasn’t changed in 16 years. Same director, same producer, same production company, filming in Belfast. We just got the gang back together and made another show. Only now it’s going all over the world at once, which is terrifying. The idea that someone on the other side of the world, who has never heard of Belfast, could watch this – I still can’t quite believe it.

Ultimately, Greta is allowed to leave with her daughter and husband under a new identity. Will we see her again?

Possibly. There’s something related to what’s in the bag at the end, and she can help with that. I also like the idea of ​​throwing the three leads into a new, even crazier scenario – perhaps taking them out of Ireland and bringing them back.

If there is a season two, will the women get better at solving mysteries?

I don’t think they will have learned anything. They may have a false sense of confidence about themselves, which can be even more dangerous. Or cause more problems. Which would also be funny. I think it’s probably funnier if they’re still chaotic and not very good.

This interview has been edited and condensed.