Movies and web series about female bonding are gradually getting space in the mainstream, but How to Get to Heaven from Belfast has three 38-year-olds running amuck, with more energy, curiosity, courage and sense of adventure than teens. Created by Lisa McGree, whose Derry Girls was a television milestone, this one also has the pace, humour and sheer craziness of the earlier show.
The eight-part series features three friends, who have known each other since school, even though their adult lives have taken very different trajectories. Saoirse (RoÃsÃn Gallagher) is the just-engaged writer of a popular TV crime show; Robyn (Sinéad Keenan) is the reluctantly domesticated, beauty-obsessed mother of three kids driving her nuts and Dara (Caoilfhionn Dunne) is a bitter lesbian, who has spent her life looking after a demanding mother.
All three get news of the sudden death of the fourth member of their school gang, Greta (Natasha O’Keeffe), whom they haven’t met in 20 years. After a traumatic incident involving the covering-up of  a murder by burning a cabin in the woods that broke up the friendship, the trio travels to the fictional village of Knockdara to pay their respects.
They didn’t imagine that the trip would turn into a nightmare and disrupt their lives. Greta’s home is a sinister place with her equally scary mother and husband, who happens to be the town’s chief of police. They are told they are not welcome. Still Saoirse manages to peep into the casket and notices that the body is not Greta’s. The corpse does not have the strange occult tattoo that all four girls got as teenagers. This discovery starts a frantic and hilariously dangerous journey across Ireland (and beyond), as the women try to figure out who it is in the coffin, if Greta is not dead then where is she, and what exactly happened on that fateful night in the forest twenty years ago. Saoirse’s writer’s antenna is up for solving a mystery—the other two go along to spice up their dreasy lives.
From the comedy of the three women way over their heads, the show directed by Michael Lennox (who also helmed Derry Girls), smoothly shifts gears into Gothic horror and a dash of sci-fi. The three are up against a chameleon-like fixer/hitwoman, Booker (Bronagh Gallagher) and later, her sidekick Feeney (Saoirse-Monica Jackson).
The son of the man the three helped Greta kill turns up looking for his dad; a ‘hot’ local cop, Liam (Darragh Hand), attracted to Saoirse, takes on the thankless task of helping the women, going against his boss. The hunt takes the three to Portugal—the sunny weather in contrast to cold, wet, stormy, Ireland—where they are blown out of a luxury yacht.
The best thing about the show– after the high-spirited performances, the glorious Irish landscape and the fabulous soundtrack– is that it is totally unpredictable, but also emotionally anchored by the loyalty of the women towards each other and their dead/missing friend. Through the medium of a large pink bag and what it contains, the show hints at a Season 2. The women peek in, are horrified, zip it up and resolve not to get involved… but of course, they will! They have to! Resuming normal life in Belfast would be boring after this!
How To Get From Heaven To Belfast
Created by Lisa McGee
Cast: Roisin Gallagher, Sinead Keenan, Caoilfhionn Dunne and others
On Netfli
