In Northern Ireland, four sixteen-year-old Irish girls and one sixteen-year-old English boy try to live their life during the Troubles. This “explosive era was fraught with car bombings, riots and revenge killings that ran from the late 1960s through the late 1990s” and was “seeded by centuries of conflict between predominantly Catholic Ireland and predominantly Protestant England”. For Erin, Clare, Michelle, Orla, and James, their fictional lives reflected the truth of many real ones during this time. Though living in an environment wrought with war and constant danger, they act like normal teenagers: “the friends fight with their parents. They lie to teachers. They stress about upcoming tests”. But they also have to deal with the news of bombings on the television, of people that were taken captive, and of deaths of those around them. And, strangely enough, it is a show about a time, though in the past, that many teenagers and young adults can relate to today.
Created by Lisa McGee, who grew up in Derry, Ireland—the same setting as the show— these stories demonstrated the true day-to-day experiences of life during the Troubles. McGee lived through the violence but also spoke of the reality behind it, including how bomb threats were so common that, “once, there was a bomb scare in a a shopping center, and her mother pushed to the front of the queue, exasperated” or how the British soldiers were, as McGee explains, “Around so much that you just had to get with it, and sort of think, Probably nothing’s going to happen today, like most days”.
Though teenagers and young adults may not be able to directly relate to the time of the Troubles, they can relate to some aspects. That’s what makes Derry Girls so enjoyable. Whether it was the impact 9/11 may have had on you, or COVID-19’s quarantine, the threat of the looming Recession, or the current Russia-Ukraine War, there is some way that a person today can understand and connect to the characters shown on the screen. As Derry Girls Erin Quinn’s diary states in the opening of the show: “I’m sixteen years old, and I come from a place called Derry, or Londonderry, depending on your Persuasion, a troubled little corner in the northwest of Ireland. It’s fair to say I have a somewhat complicated relationship with my home town. The thing about”. We are surprised to find out that it is Erin’s cousin Orla who is reading the diary, something quite relatable for those who have siblings or family living with them.
So what is a Derry Girl?
As character Michelle puts it, being a Derry Girl is a “state of mind”. A state of mind that many might be relating to today.
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