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As summer nears its end, school once again re-enters the minds of young students across the country. While high school coming-of-age tales are popular fodder for film and TV alike, many miss the mark. Some are just bad. Others oversexualize adolescents. And even among the stories that are good at an objective level, many fail to capture anything that feels real about the teenage experience.
So when looking for more shows to put on your quarantine watch list, consider adding Derry Girls to the schedule. Derry Girls, broadcast by Channel 4 in the UK and distributed by Netflix in the US, is a semi-popular British sitcom that manages to sidestep most — or perhaps even all — of these pitfalls. Derry Girls may not seem like much at first glance. With a grand total of twelve twenty-minute episodes across its two seasons to date, there’s surprisingly little of it. But just about every minute of it is worth watching.
Who Are The Derry Girls?
The protagonist, and member of the titular Derry Girls, is Erin, an enthusiastic if incredibly vain sixteen-year-old girl. She is frequently accompanied by her cousin, Orla, a thoughtful but strange teenager with notable eccentricities.
They are also close to Clare, a homebody with a penchant for the rules and an anxious streak. Clare frequently functions as the voice of common sense for the group (though she is oft-ignored), but her uptight nature and nerves get them in trouble just as often as the others’ recklessness.
The rebel of the group in Derry Girls is Michelle, a defiant rulebreaker with an attitude issue. And lastly, rounding out the group, is James. He’s a newcomer to town, arriving in the first episode. James is Michelle’s cousin from England and has been enrolled in the same secondary school as the rest of the Derry Girls (Our Lady Immaculate) out of concerns for his safety. Generally good-hearted and affable, James takes his friends’ teasing over his English upbringing with grace and offers much necessary support.
Derry Girls And The Shadow Of Conflict
In many ways, James’ arrival is a microcosm of some of the larger-scale issues at play in the series. The worries for his safety at the other school stem from the fact that he is English. This is particularly relevant because the backdrop of Derry Girls is the late-twentieth-century conflict between Northern Ireland and England that is sometimes euphemistically referred to as “The Troubles.”
With this in mind, it might seem slightly ridiculous to point to Derry Girls as an example of a deeply relatable high school show. Derry Girls is, after all, about a handful of Irish girls from the nineties, all of whom go to a private Catholic girl’s school as a decades-long conflict continues in the background. This is not, in and of itself, a universal experience. But the truth is, Derry Girls is a coming-of-age story that does almost everything right.
While it is undeniable that the aforementioned features, including the conflict between Northern Ireland and England, play a key role in the series, they are also not what Derry Girls is about. While the show takes care to show us shots of news reports broadcasting bomb threats, frequently opening or closing episodes with such scenes, it is quick to cut to the main group of characters happily spending time together, ignoring important responsibilities, with very little address of the goings-on of the news. In Derry Girls, the events occurring in the background are always present and felt by the viewer.
The protagonists themselves aren’t ignorant of them either. It is a part of their every-day life but does not consume it. While the Derry Girls reference, and even seem concerned by these events at times (though not nearly as much as their adult counterparts), the truth is that at the end of the day, they are more preoccupied with the things teenagers usually are.
They are busy trying to get out of detention so Erin can go to her crush’s music performance, or lying to their parents about their locations so they can sneak out and see a concert by English pop group Take That (from which they were forbidden due to news reports of an escaped polar bear.) For all its other features, Derry Girls is about high school and adolescence, and it handles these themes in a way that rings true to the human experience.
Timeless Teen Struggles (In The Face Of The Unusual)
Derry Girls’ interest in addressing some of the universal coming-of-age struggles, even against the background of “The Troubles,” makes for fascinating television. One arc in Derry Girls’ first season, for instance, tackles one protagonist’s sexuality. Erin finds a letter written to the newspaper by an anonymous lesbian student and, selfishly motivated by a desire to prove her own mettle as a journalist, decides that the paper must advocate for her. When Clare, emboldened by Erin’s reaction, comes out to her—revealing that she is (as Derry Girls calls her) the “wee lesbian” that wrote the letter—Erin’s reaction is lacking.
Erin responded with an echo of the experience that many people who have come out as queer in the modern-day era might recognize. Despite her vocal insistence that she is a supporter of gay rights, she gives Clare’s admission a cold and self-centered reception. She is initially slightly disgusted, then says, “Well, I’m sorry, Clare, but I’m not interested in you like that.” Clare, disappointed and angry, storms off soon after.
But Derry Girls does not make Erin’s brief moment of homophobia one of her defining character traits. While an argument could certainly be made that it should have been, there is also something to be said for the fact that Derry GIrls does not choose to give Erin—a deeply flawed but ultimately likable and sympathetic lead—lasting homophobia as a primary character trait. The creator of Derry Girls, Lisa McGee, confirmed in an interview with RadioTimes that while Erin fancies herself mature and accepting, her initial reaction is evidence of some of the pretenses she puts on.
Eventually, though, Erin’s genuine care for Clare and Clare’s obvious hurt causes Erin to step back. She re-examines her own behavior and reconciles with Clare at the end of the episode as they come to the defense of Orla, who is becoming the laughing-stock of the school as she performs a ridiculous dance routine during their talent show. Some might claim that this is an unrealistic outcome for the times, but Derry Girls’ transition into acceptance is a breath of fresh air when the dominant narratives of so many queer characters in TV and film involve a fight to be accepted by their friends and family.
The Awkwardness Of Adolescence
By next season, all the characters have taken to wearing small rainbow pins on their lapels. It’s a quiet show of support by the Derry Girls, never called out or questioned, and no one makes a fuss over it. It’s an easy detail to miss, but once noticed, it’s a touching act of solidarity. Derry Girls shows us an act of quiet acceptance, something that many teenagers, especially queer teenagers, long for, while also modeling how the correct (and incorrect) ways to react to your peers coming out.
Another intriguing thing about Derry Girls is its use of older actors in the place of teenagers. While most of the actors used are well into their twenties, Derry Girls never uses this as an excuse to sexualize their characters. Even when they aren’t wearing their uniforms, most of the protagonists seem to favor thick-knit sweaters and jackets. Combined with the writing, which frequently draws attention to the strange balance of maturity and naivete possessed by the protagonists, the show manages to make this cast of adults feel like teenagers.
Though they don’t look adolescent, they come across gangly and awkward and nervous, growing up and coming into their own. They are headed towards adulthood but their feet are still firmly in the innocence of childhood. This strange gray area between adulthood and childhood, irresponsibility and maturity, is where our protagonists spend most of their time.
As mentioned above, Derry Girls takes great care to interpose shots of the protagonists enjoying their childhoods, getting up to shenanigans and ignoring their work, with news reports and their parents’ obvious concern over the ongoing conflict between Northern Ireland and England.
The Beautiful Balancing Act Of Derry Girls
But just because “The Troubles” don’t dominate their narrative doesn’t mean the protagonists are ignorant. The Derry Girls are clearly aware of what’s going on–an entire episode is devoted to an attempt to foster bonding between the Catholic students of Our Lady Immaculate and a group of Protestant students, and the girls also frequently make jabs at James for his English heritage. There are also several one-off lines suggesting that our main characters are keeping up with their history and current events.
In response to an idle comment James makes about the number of rebellions and rises that he has to study, Michelle snaps:
“Well if you lot had stopped invading us for five fucking minutes there’d be a lot less to wade through.”
This, perhaps, is Derry Girls’ greatest victory. The characters strike a perfect and true balance between the awareness of the struggles going on in the rest of their world, inches away from a decades-long violent conflict, and still finding some time to be children. Even in the face of struggle, life goes on. The world keeps turning. They find joy and love and the time to be dumb and make bad choices.
For all the political turmoil the Derry Girls are growing up adjacent to, they care just as much about concerts and crushes and impressing the new teacher who they think is cool. While adolescence can be and is a very difficult time for many, and Derry Girls does choose to emphasize the positive aspects over the negative, the awkwardness and confusion of being a teenager is a universal experience. Regardless of the time, location, and situation — teens will be teens. Derry Girls remembers that.
And that’s what makes it good.
