CHANNEL 4 HAVE released a trailer for an upcoming comedy series called Derry Girls, which follows the life of a group of pals during The Troubles. It looks fairly promising.

The show was conceptualised by writer Lisa McGee, who is from Derry. She grew up during the 1990s and it wasn’t until she moved to London later in her life that she realised how unusual the circumstances in the north had been.

McGee told the Belfast Telegraph why she made the bold decision to write a comedy against a backdrop like The Troubles.

Anything set during The Troubles tends to b e a bit grim and bleak, but that just wasn’t my experience of Derry as a child and a teenager. It was a joyful place – I’d like to celebrate that.

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McGee also said that although British soldiers patrolled the streets she grew up on and people lived in fear of bombs going off, people still had to get on with the mundane parts of life.

Teenagers everywhere are the same – no matter what is going on around them. There are things they all have in common – their families frustrate them, their friends embarrass them, the boy they like doesn’t know that they exist – and I thought there was something nice about how universal that is.

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So the show focuses on a teenage girl named Erin and her friends Clare, Michelle and Orla.

Tommy Tiernan plays Erin’s dad Gerry, and Belfast actress Tara Lynne O’Neill plays her mam whose name is Mary (you might remember her as Sadie from Fair City). Game of Thrones actor Ian McElhinney plays Erin’s granddad Joe.

It’s set to kick off on the 4th of January at 10pm on Channel 4.

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