Derry Girls

It's the last episode in what has been an excellent series, so much so that it gets away with having a 31-year-old (Nicola Coughlan) playing a 16-year-old (Clare Devlin). Tonight, though, it's Erin who comes to the fore, desperate for a juicy exclusive for the school magazine. This arrives in the form of a lesbian scandal. Sister Michael, however, played with wonderfully dry cynicism by Siobhan McSweeney, puts the mockers on that. A lovely finale, tinged with a bitter reminder of the Troubles against which it is set.

Derry Girls challenges image of NI during The Troubles

Lisa McGee explains why she put the strong, warm women of Derry at the centre of a comedy set during Northern Ireland's darkest days.

The Troubles have rarely registered as much more than a tiresome background hum in Lisa McGee's fabulous sitcom. Tonight, marching season brings them into sharper focus. Rehearsals are under way ("They've played the same three songs since 1795. What do they need to rehearse for?") and a holiday is mooted. Heart and hilarity in spades.

The Irish women making TV's best comedies

From Channel 4's Derry Girls to RTE's Nowhere Fast, female-led Irish comedies are coming thick and fast. We talk to the people behind them, and ask if they can help drive societal change.

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.

Ma Mary and Aunt Sarah are the unsung heroes

The marvellous mammies are every inch as funny as their wonderful wains.

Derry Girls: realistic comedy about young women in NI

The Channel 4 sitcom is nostalgic but it's also a truthful and funny representation of teenage girls growing up during the Troubles.

Derry Girls is the funniest thing on TV

Lisa McGee's sitcom has already been renewed for another series by Channel 4, and deserves it for its wicked sense of humour and pitch-perfect 90s nostalgia.