this is stuff you like and Sister Michael gives me life. also I literally
just finished watching the last episode of Derry Girls like an hour ago so yeah
we need to talk about Derry Girls. Derry Girls is a sitcom set in Derry or
Londonderry dependin' on your persuasion in the 90s
it features sixteen year old Erin her dippy cousin Orla short wussy friend
Clare mouthy dark-haired friend Michelle and Michelle's unfortunately
English cousin James, the only boy in there old girls Catholic school because
they were worried he would get beaten up with the boys it's on channel 4 or it
was on channel 4 you should watch it you should really watch it. It's just
hilarious I mean for a start I just appreciate any show which uses the
phrase catch yourself on, because it's an expression I really kind of miss.
it's full of one-liners which are sharp enough to cut it's a perfect period
piece with the clothes and the hair and the music and the decor it absolutely
nails the attitudes like in the first episode there's a bomb on the bridge and
people's reactions are "bloody bomb I begged the Brits to let me take my chances
but the awkward bastards made me go the long way round" well yes. it gets better over
the course of the six episodes and the last episode is just perfect and it's so
normal I mean there's an episode dedicated to a school trip to Paris
that they want to go on and a fish and chips shop. I mean as in all sitcoms
ridiculous things happen but as in good sitcoms they are grounded in absolute banal
normality or what passes for banal normality in Derry in the 90s anyway. I
used to watch Give My Head Peace which was topical political humour in sitcom
form. it focused on anRUC officer who married a Catholic girl and then later
her sister don't don't ask it was just it was a thing, and their highly
dysfunctional families, but they both lived in Belfast. Billy and uncle Andy
lived in East Belfast and ma and and Cal lived in Divis Towers. and I really
loved it as a teenager though I hear that the most recent episodes were not
quite so good but Derry Girls resonates with me because (and I'm in no way alone
in this) it feels like it was made for me I grew up in the back end of nowhere and
I went to a Protestant school in an entirely different part of the country
and I wasn't a teenager until the early 2000s but
man some things just don't change, and some things change a little bit but not
enough to matter. and when I say it's mostly about teenage girls it's mostly
not about boys or romance or whatever though there is a bit of that it's about
everyday life and dealing with family and school and having a really
close-knit group of friends and man that nostalgia it hits hard all right. so this
is the part of the episode where if you haven't watched Derry Girls you should
go and do that because we are going to be discussing some serious spoilers from
the finale and I would not deprive you of the experience of watching it. maybe
also stay out of the comment section just just take my word for this go watch
it are they gone? right. the season finale more than anything reminded me of
Blackadder goes forth and in the best possible way because I really love that
show too the contrast of the girls and James dancing while the Quinn family
watched the news where a dozen people have been killed
it was very poignant it was really good Lisa McGee
I'm not crying you're crying and I especially liked it because it nails the
thing that's really hard to explain to people sometimes by growing up during
the Troubles there is a lot in fact most of your life is stuff that other people
would consider normal revising for exams or dancing to Saturday Night or having
crushes on boys or girls for that matter but we'll get to that it's just that
your life is sometimes peppered with experiences which are not at all normal
to other people but they're entirely normal to you and they're entirely
normal to the people around you and most of the time you don't really think about
how people's experiences might differ outside of your part of the world. oh and
if you're anything like me you probably ended up on Wikipedia at the end of the
episode trying to figure out if the bombing was a reference to a particular
bombing and Lisa McGee said no it wasn't a particular bombing she had in mind but
there were a depressing number to choose from the other big revelation for the
episode was that Clare is a lesbian and I think they handled it really really
well because when Clare goes to Erin and comes out Erin is shocked. Erin who
as Lisa McGee says thinks of herself is so worldly and so wise and so liberal
who chides people for their homophobia and she sticks her foot right in her
mouth I mean this is a fairly typical character trait of Erin anyway but
shock does make people do stupid things and having to radically rejig the
mental picture of someone who's been close to you for a long time is kind of
shocking. Erin also assumes that Clare fancies her which is pitch perfect to
Erin's mememe view of the universe, which allows us Claire's wonderful
wonderful response of "I'm not interested in you like that look at the state of you!"
I don't know about anybody else but I just appreciated that moment. a lot. it hurts
though when Erin doesn't react the way Clare wants her to and it hurts again
though in a good way when James goes to sit with Clare during the talent show
Michelle is generally too self-involved to do something like that and she's more
Erin's friend than she is Clare's but I love James I do he reminds me very
much of someone I know they even have the same hair but yeah it's so good and
so funny and so poignant and so true and okay maybe Clare's story coming out as a
Catholic lesbian in Derry in the 90s is unusually rosy but I like that too it's
hopeful and it's sweet and it's kindness in the midst of horror and sometimes
we'll take what we can get if nothing else I hope it's something of an
encouragement to all the Clares still out there, you know? that's about it for
this week I think if you want to leave your favorite line or your favorite
thing or your favorite character from Derry Girls in the comments if you want
to support the show to see more things like this you can always go to patreon
and regardless I'll see you all next time. Catch yourself on!