Derry Girls writer Lisa McGee: New series bigger and more ambitious

The Channel 4 comedy follows the antics of some schoolchildren growing up in Londonderry in Northern Ireland around the time of the IRA and loyalist ceasefires.

Lisa McGee said she hoped audiences would laugh and engage in nostalgia for the 1990s and the period before US president Bill Clinton’s historic 1995 visit.

She said: “It is a bit more hopeful but the girls are still a disaster.

“Maybe the scale of what they are getting up to is a bit bigger, we have tried to push it a bit and add a bit more ambition about it this series.

“The antics are a bit bigger and better and we get out and about a bit more, we see a bit more of Northern Ireland and that sort of thing.”

Derry Girls, which received funding from Northern Ireland Screen, was set in 1994 and based on McGee’s schooldays in the city.

It was an immediate hit after the first series was broadcast a year ago.

Channel 4 commissioned a second helping of the programme about four 16-year-old friends and an English boy.

Ms McGee said: “There is something universal about being a teenager and that sort of selfishness, that self-centredness, everybody can remember being like that, when all things were the biggest dramas ever.”

She added: “The family dynamic too. Everybody understands how, when you were young, feeling like everything your mum and dad said was unfair.

“There are things that everyone, no matter if you are Irish or not, can identify with.”

She said the theme was always to make people laugh and have a good time.

She said: “Those sort of darker times have to co-exist with the lighter times as well, we try to always be truthful about that.”

Derry Girls centres on 16-year-old Erin Quinn, played by Saoirse-Monica Jackson.

She said: “It is definitely bigger and braver, we had an absolute ball filming it.

“It was a different experience this time round, we know each other so well and we know our characters so well, so it was a lot more enjoyable in that sense.

“It is always a great job to do when it is comedy because you are just laughing all the time.”

The premiere of the show was held in Londonderry earlier this month.

Jackson said: “Truth always translates well and it is very authentic, it is very true.

“Anybody from a small community or a big family can connect to the show, it does not matter what background you are from.

“Each one of the characters that she (McGee) has created is so well-rounded and so sculpted in such an honest but brilliant way.”