How To Get To Heaven From Belfast

Netflix’s How To Get To Heaven From Belfast is the new series from the creator of the beloved show Derry Girls. It follows three very messy longtime friends working together to solve a mystery from their youth. Part mystery and part comedy, it’s a darkly funny adventure through Ireland and elsewhere, as they elude various pursuers, reopen old wounds, and try to find answers about what has happened to a friend they lost along the way. To access bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening for Pop Culture Happy Hour, subscribe to Pop Culture Happy Hour+ at plus.npr.org/happy. http://plus.npr.org/happy See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:21Linda Holmes?

  The Netflix series How to Get to Heaven from Belfast asks this question: Can three very messy, longtime friends work together to solve a mystery from their youth? From the creator of the beloved show Dairy Girls, the series follows them on a darkly funny adventure through Ireland and elsewhere. They elude various pursuers, they reopen old wounds, and they try to find answers about what has happened to a friend they lost along the way. I'm Linda Holmes, and today on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour, we're talking about How to Get to Heaven from Belfast.

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• 1:58Linda Holmes?

  Joining me today is the host of the podcast Happy to be Here, Greta Johnson. Hello, Greta.

• 2:03Speaker 03

  Hey, Linda.

• 2:04Linda Holmes?

  And also with us is Jeff Yang. He's a cultural critic and the author of The Golden Screen: The Movies That Made Asian America. Welcome back, Jeff.

• 2:12Speaker 04

  Hey, Linda. Glad to be back.

• 2:14Linda Holmes?

  All right. So How to Get to Heaven from Belfast comes from Lisa McGee, the creator of Dairy Girls, another show about a group of what you might call unruly women. This time, the focus is on three middle-aged friends. Saoirse, played by Rosheen Gallagher, is a TV writer. Dara, played by Kalen Dunn, spends a lot of her time taking care of her mother. And Robin, played by Sinead Keenan, is a mom of three kids. When the women get word that Greta, a friend from school with whom they'd lost touch, has died, they decide to travel to her wake, partly to pay their respects, but partly because the four girls once shared a big and awful secret, and they want to make sure nobody finds out.

• 2:58Linda Holmes?

  Once they get to the wake, things only get stranger, and figuring out what really happened to Greta seems more pressing than ever. The story unfolds over eight episodes. It's part mystery and part comedy, and it's streaming now on Netflix. Now, with apologies for the fact that you share a name with the murder victim, I'm going to start with you, Greta, our Greta. How did you like this story of another Greta?

• 3:25Speaker 03

  Oh, my gosh. I have to ask, Linda, did y'all choose me to do this one because of the Greta of it all, or no?

• 3:30Linda Holmes?

  I don't think so, no. We just like you.

• 3:34Speaker 03

  It was such a pleasant surprise. It's hilarious. I have to say, I feel like I could do like a whole thing on pop culture representations of Greta. But regardless, I thought this show was wonderful. It was just like a total delight. I enjoyed hanging out with these women. I enjoyed the messiness. There's a wackiness to it. And there's also still like a fair amount of substance, which I really appreciated, given the fact that I think often, especially with Netflix. The shows always look good. There's always like sort of a shininess to them, but substance can vary. And this one is also a reconciliation of trauma and grief. And yeah, I just thought it was a great ride.

• 4:14Linda Holmes?

  Yeah, there's definitely a mix of like heavy stuff and funny stuff that is hard to accomplish. Jeff, how did you feel about How to Get to Heaven from Belfast?

• 4:24Speaker 04

  So I kind of doodled a little chart about the show after watching it because it was a ride. And by the way, ride means something different in the world of the show. Initially, I didn't really like it. And I think part of that was because of my expectations from Dairy Girls, and I'm a huge Dairy Girls fan. It's just straight crack. And this show starts differently. It's much slower in its build. And it gets dark a lot faster in ways that aren't leavened with the kind of constant just innocent joy of Dairy Girls. I went into the kind of this place whereby around the middle, I was like, I really don't like this show. And then I kept on going, just

• 5:06Speaker 04

  powered ahead because of the great character writing and the fact that Dara Hand is super hot.

• 5:13Linda Holmes?

  Who appears as the young police officer.

• 5:15Speaker 04

  Yes, the young police officer and dominates the screen whenever he appears.

• 5:18Speaker 03

  He is a babe.

• 5:19Speaker 04

  He is very much a babe.

• 5:22Speaker 04

  But the fact is, over time, I not only turned around on it, but I ended up really kind of loving it. And it does take that work because I think there is a bit of a slow pacing and the narrative is very pretzel-like and opaque for the base of first five episodes. But if you stick with it, it definitely pays off. And it's, at the end of it, I mean, I just wanted to see more of these girls.

• 5:45Linda Holmes?

  Yeah. When I watch a Netflix eight-episode mystery or, you know, something like that drama. I often go into it thinking I may very well feel like this should have been six instead of eight episodes. I think I did feel that way a little bit about this one, simply because for me, it started off really delightful as I got to know the women. And like, I just think all three of these main characters are just wonderful inventions. I think they're so funny and they're all unique and they're all strange in different ways that I very much enjoyed discovering. But then when you get into the actual mystery itself, I felt like it bogged down a little bit.

• 6:28Linda Holmes?

  And in the middle, I did feel like it developed pretty slowly. And there was a little bit of like, okay, you know, you're dropping a lot of foreshadowing about like, they're having flashbacks to like, some kind of terrible traumatic night. There's clearly was a fire somewhere and like, I need to start uncovering some information. At the same time, as you go along, so much of it is so much fun to watch, including like anytime these women are just like frustrated with each other on this road trip. Which happens a lot. I found it completely delightful. And these are not really actresses that I knew well.

• 7:07Linda Holmes?

  And so just watching them kind of, I don't know, hang out, I thought was so entertaining.

• 7:14Speaker 03

  I think that can help so much with a mystery, which is like, as you put it, Jeff, pretzel-like, you know, that opacity is like, well, as long as it's a good hang, you can kind of get through some of that. I'm not exactly sure what this backstory is, but we'll figure it out eventually.

• 7:30Speaker 04

  I also feel like the world building that Mickey does is always so rich and so vital. Part of the reason I was so captivated by Dairy Girls when I first watched it, I'm not going to be ashamed by saying it was a Netflix recommendation, but I totally got hooked, you know?

• 7:47Linda Holmes?

  No, of course.

• 7:48Speaker 04

  It's the incredible writing, dead-on comic performances, but also it's like this rare opportunity to have this, for me anyway, exotic fascination with white culture.

• 7:59Speaker 04

  When I was watching that, and it's the same is true with this, I just kind of felt like all of a sudden I understood what it was like to, you know, stumble over the pronunciation of names and be confused by the political and ethnic differences between groups of people who look exactly the same, you know? Oh, this is what it feels like. And, you know, I'm searching the internet for cultural references and explainers. For me, it was very refreshing that way. And I will also say this, I mean, my parents are from Taiwan, another little green spot on the map, and there is kind of a common vibe there with Northern Ireland, that whole divide between Remainers and independence activists. It's very similar, and there are still beats of that in this. I mean, Dairy Girls, Set During the Troubles, there's still reference points to like, oh, you've up and joined the IRA in this.

• 8:43Linda Holmes?

  Right. The thing that's so funny is that now they talk about, did you join the IRA? But that's like a dated reference to them. Have you joined the IRA?

• 8:52Speaker 05

  Nobody does the IRA anymore, mommy. Your cousin Mary did only last month. Mary joined ISIS, mommy. What? Oh, no, sorry, not ISIS. Bupa.

• 9:01Linda Holmes?

  They said something about Bupa, right? Which is B U P A, and I was like, I don't even know what that is, and I guess it's health insurance. And I looked it up, and I was like, oh, that is funny. I gotta say, like, I just think, as I said before, all three of these lead characters, so often in like a three-person group, I will have like a clear favorite and like clear people, and I'm like, oh, I wasn't as interested in this person. I was interested in all of them, and, you know, it takes a while to sort of figure out exactly who they are to each other, but I will say, in particular, I felt like watching Kaitlyn Dunn playing Dara.

• 9:43Linda Holmes?

  It's like, I've just never seen a performance quite like this before. She's this really kind of odd duck.

• 9:52Linda Holmes?

  You know, queer woman, she's not an odd duck because she's queer, but she is a queer woman and a kind of an oddball, but she's also really funny and really smart. And I just found watching her to be completely fascinating. Loved it.

• 10:05Speaker 03

  I do think also it's worth noting that later on in this season, especially there are some flashbacks to when all four of them are in high school and that casting is phenomenal. Like you can tell so clearly because you know, sometimes it's like, oh, I don't know who's who, but in this case it was like, nope, there's Dara. That's her.

• 10:23Linda Holmes?

  Oh, absolutely. But I think her especially, you just look at that, you look at that young actress and you're like, oh yeah, of course.

• 10:29Speaker 04

  Quick callback to Dairy Girls because there is also this flashback episode that takes place in that series that everybody loves for similar reasons. But Justin McGee is so good at finding these cast members of different generations that still map out to each other very clearly. And yeah, you know, there feels like there's a lot of DNA from that episode, the Dairy Mums episode in this series. She is looking at a different time, obviously, but it's a generation of young rebels who've turned into people who they don't quite recognize. And this is like this opportunity for them to recapture that spirit. You gotta love that. It's so fun.

• 11:06Linda Holmes?

  I did appreciate also, you know, you talked about the kind of the sense of, of an exotic culture. I also just really enjoyed the use of the locations in this, you know, they're sort of going all around different parts of Ireland. They actually paid a visit to Portugal at one point. And I just liked the variety of locations. And I, I think without spoiling it, I can say there are a couple of little treats for people who love Dairy Girls that will kind of pop up a couple of times because McGee obviously, you know, loves that project and knows that it's kind of what she's known for. And I enjoyed watching that.

• 11:43Speaker 04

  I do think that there is something very purposefully shaggy dog-like about the setup for much of the first several episodes. This is part of the reason why I think initially I was like, oh, I don't like where this is going. It feels like some of the worst impulses of the Knives Out franchise where it's like, oh, we're going to set up all these characters, make it very clear that any of them could be bad or good, and you don't know what's going on and then unravel it at the end. And it's a very tough thing to land, you know? It can become very kind of twee and purposely obfuscatory very quickly. But McGee does it, which is funny because there are a lot of meta references inside the show

• 12:25Speaker 04

  since the lead charact- the center of the trilogy is herself a TV writer, which ends up being kind of a critical element in the storyline. It's not, you know, Knives Out, Rian Johnson, who's being referenced here. It's actually, there are all these kind of constant in-joke name drops of Jesse Armstrong.

• 12:46Linda Holmes?

  That was very funny.

• 12:47Speaker 04

  That was hilarious.

• 12:49Speaker 03

  It's perfect.

• 12:51Linda Holmes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 12:51Speaker 03

  I also think we should talk a little bit about the soundtrack because I think, at least for me, that really did help with The Darkness. They're all like party jams.

• 13:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think it really helps just sort of like balance out, especially while you're trying to figure out, you know, something as intense as how did our childhood friend die?

• 13:13Linda Holmes?

  One of the things I think is so interesting about the three of them is that there's not really a straight woman, straight woman in the comedy sense.

• 13:20Speaker 04

  Right.

• 13:21Linda Holmes?

  There's not really a straight woman in that group. They're all funny and they're all silly. And I thought that was cool. Like, I, I am sort of used to seeing a group like that turn out where like one person is a little more of a stick in the mud and, you know, never wants to do anything. These women are all kind of out there with how they approach all this.

• 13:44Speaker 03

  That's a nice point. They're all game. They are all grounded in their own ways too. But yeah, you don't have like the wet blanket, just like bummer lady, which is nice.

• 13:54Linda Holmes?

  Right.

• 13:55Speaker 04

  And you also don't have the one person who's just explaining everything, right? I think that's also something McGee just proved she could do so effortlessly with, again, Terry Girls. It's like. You can actually have a group where everybody's distinct and they don't all have to circle around one anchor. It's kind of a mutual hands in the middle kind of thing. And she does that here really effortlessly. So maybe she's good at it.

• 14:21Linda Holmes?

  Yeah. And I will say, you know, when you watch a show like this and it's coming to the end, you're like, it's a mystery. This is a creator that Netflix likes. Are they going to end it? Is it going to be like, you know, because I would never want there to be a mystery and have them be like, we're not solving it. Come back next time. But I also, as I think Jeff mentioned, wanted to continue hanging out with these women. So I was like, I would watch them again. And I think they do a good job of landing it where like, if they don't ever make it again, I feel fine about it. I don't feel cheated. I don't feel like they didn't complete their story. But at the same time, you look at it and you're like, maybe, maybe they'll be back. And I would watch them again.

• 15:01Speaker 04

  I mean, there's unquestionably a very big plant of a potential continuance at the very end of this thing. And there are also actually a few things that are not fully resolved. I mean, when we, where we end is still, it feels like there could be a, an epilogue that resolves a lot of the relationships, for instance, right? But I think that is purposeful. And maybe if, again, Netflix and all of its algorithmic wisdom decides to let this roll on, they definitely have kept that door open for McGee to continue.

• 15:33Speaker 03

  They have, and I totally would watch a season two. But I think also, given how different Dairy Girls and this one are, I'm also just really excited to see, like, hopefully, whatever it is she comes up with next, she will be well supported in that. And I'm really excited to see what Lisa does.

• 15:49Linda Holmes?

  Yeah, I absolutely agree. I had sort of a similar trajectory to Jeff where like, I was more like, I liked it at the very beginning, and then I dropped off a little bit. But then I came back around to it as I think they kind of like barreled toward the ending.

• 16:05Speaker 03

  Barrel is such a perfect word for it.

• 16:07Linda Holmes?

  It's really true. At some point, it just kind of keeps, it keeps flying forward. This is just a pleasurable watch with very, very funny women. Well, we want to know what you think about How to Get to Heaven from Belfast. Find us at facebook.com/PCHH. That brings us to the end of our show. Greta Johnson, Jeff Yang, thank you so much for being here. Thank you.

• 16:30Speaker 04

  Thanks, Lynda.

• 16:31Linda Holmes?

  And just a reminder that signing up for Pop Culture Happy Hour Plus is a great way to support our show and public radio. You get to listen to all of our episodes sponsor free. So please go find out more at plus.npr.org/happyhour or visit the link in our show notes. This episode is produced by Hafsa Fathama, Liz Metzger, and Mike Katseff, and edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy. Hello, Come In provides our theme music. Thanks for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Linda Holmes, and we'll see you all next time.

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