The brainchild of Derry Girls creator Liz McGee, this is a strange and tortuous tale which defies easy categorisation. There’s plenty of humour in it but it isn’t a comedy, and it also lays out a long trail of tragedy and pain spanning generations. You might argue that there’s a bit of redemption on offer, but then again you might not.
Anyway, the narrative revolves around three women in their late thirties, Saoirse (Roisin Gallagher), Dara (Caoilfhionn Dunne) and Robyn (Sinead Keenan), close friends from childhood and now living in Belfast. Their old bonds are rekindled when they’re invited to the town of Knockdara in County Donegal, for the funeral of another friend from the old days, Greta, who apparently suffered a fatal fall down a flight of stairs. A solemn occasion obviously, but the going gets a little weirder when they learn that the bereaved husband’s sister, who invited them, doesn’t in fact exist. Much more startling is Saoirse’s discovery that the body lying in Greta’s coffin is not in fact Greta’s.
We’ve already been seeing unexplained but menacing scenes of four young girls watching a blazing building in the middle of the woods (pictured left), which suggests a dramatic and deadly past which our protagonists share, but you’ll have to buckle up for all eight episodes before the twisty tendrils of the narrative are finally unravelled. Meanwhile, you need to keep paying attention (and taking notes wouldn’t be a bad idea) because this is a story riddled with false clues and cunning misdirections, and includes a detective-story-within-a-detective-story and an amusing excursion to Portugal. There’s also a lot of name-changing and swapped identities which can get a bit exasperating, not to mention confusing.
It helps, though, that the central trio of women make a natural comic collective, bickering, arguing and taking the piss relentlessly. Dara is tall, gangly and plays it with a stubborn deadpanness which is almost silent comedy. Robyn is a harassed mother liable to erupt in a conflagration of raging expletives, while Saoirse is a TV script writer (currently working on the crime series Murder Code), who can’t resist slipping fragments of their real-life adventures into her screenplays.
For that matter, Lisa McGee herself is apt to cast a satirical eye over her own profession. We get jokes about the Bafta awards, and some barbed observations about the inner workings of TV production. There’s a brilliant scene where Saoirse makes an impromptu appearance on Patrick Kielty’s Late Late Show, and nods out on live TV because she’s blitzed on tranquillisers.
Underlying it all, though, is a compelling theme about friendship, loyalty, and how the past can contaminate the present. There’s a powerfully feminist message too. Abuse of women – albeit sometimes by other women – lies at the core of the story, and has prompted the creation of a shadowy organisation which provides female victims with new identities. Snag is, the operation has got a little out of hand and sometimes finds itself turning into a ruthless death squad, personified by the stone-faced Booker (Bronagh Gallagher, pictured above).
To sum up… it’s kind of indescribable. You’ll just have to check it out for yourself.
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