Derry Girls

Katya, "a child of Chernobyl", comes to stay in Derry. "They've come over to give their wee lungs a bit of a clear out," says a priest, who just about nails the off-key approach that most of the residents of Derry have towards their new visitors. Katya turns out to be more than capable of dealing with her new hosts, but it is the family's reaction to grandad's new relationship with Maev (they winked at each other at mass) that captures the essence of what made Lisa McGee's comedy one of the best of 2018.

In order "to give their wee lungs a bit of a clear out", a group of teenagers from Chernobyl visit Derry. Naturally, forthright Erin, a naif who imagines herself worldly, expects her house guest to be appropriately grateful, only to find sophisticated Katya (Diona Doherty) treats her with disdain. Elsewhere, Granda Joe makes a new friend, a development that goes down badly with his daughters. Lisa McGee's Troubles-set comedy continues to be a rare combination of poignant and laugh-out-loud funny.

Derry Girls - reviewed by a real Derry Girl

Claire Allan grew up in Derry in the '90s - and attended the same high school depicted in Channel 4 comedy Derry Girls. She looks at how the hit show captures that time and place.

Thank you, Derry Girls, for telling the truth

There have been times, I must admit, when I have quietly put off watching plays and television series set in Troubles-era Northern Ireland. It's not that I don't think they will be good. It's just that, having grown up there in the 1970s and 1980s, with stories of grim tit-for-tat murders regularly on the nightly news, I sometimes have to brace myself imaginatively to re-enter the bullets and barbed-wire side of our history: it might be painful if a dramatist conveys the events and atmosphere accurately, and painful in another way if they don't.This caveat does not apply to Derry Girls, the new Channel 4 series by Lisa McGee, which follows a bunch of 16-year-old Catholic schoolgirls in the early Nineties.