‘Derry Girls’ creator Lisa McGee reunites with Hat Trick for next Channel 4 show

Derry Girls

Derry Girls creator Lisa McGee has reunited with Hat Trick Productions to set her next project for UK broadcaster Channel 4, which has ordered her new comedy-thriller, How To Get To Heaven From Belfast.

Written and created by McGee, the 8 x 60-minute comedy series will follow Saoirse, Robyn and Dara who have been friends since school. Now in their late thirties they lead very different lives. Saoirse a successful writer with a compulsion to hit the self-destruct button, Robyn, a sweary, stressed out mother of three young boys, and Dara, a full-time carer of an elderly parent, who hasn’t managed to move out of her teenage bedroom.

Lisa McGee

When the women each receive an email informing them of the death of Greta, an old classmate they were once very close with, there’s clearly some unspoken, unfinished business. The friends decide to attend Greta’s wake and discover all may not be quite as it seems. They soon find themselves embroiled in a dark and twisted mystery.

How To Get To Heaven From Belfast was commissioned by Charlie Perkins, head of comedy at Channel 4. It will be developed as a collaboration between Channel 4’s comedy and drama departments.

The series will be produced by Hat Trick Productions, which was also behind McGee’s Derry Girls, and executive produced by Caroline Leddy (Derry Girls, The Inbetweeners, Friday Night Dinner), Liz Lewin (Derry Girls. London Irish, Crashing) and Jimmy Mulville.

McGee said: “I feel so incredibly lucky to be making another show for the phenomenal Channel 4 and to be doing it with Hat Trick Productions again and the creative team behind Derry Girls, the mighty Liz Lewin and Caroline Leddy, is just a dream. I’ve wanted to make a comedy thriller set in Northern Ireland for such a long time. I cannot wait to share these flawed funny women with everyone.”