Sinead Keenan, Caoilfhionn Dunne and Roisin Gallagher of 'How to Get to Heaven from Belfast.' Netflix Share on Facebook Share on X Google Preferred Share to Flipboard Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Send an Email Print the Article Post a Comment It's a good time to be a fan of somewhat zany, deceptively emotional, heavily accented, female-forward mystery-comedies on the small screen. Audiences who responded to Apple's perpetually awards-miscategorized Bad Sisters and Amazon's more overtly wacky Deadloch, returning for its second season next month, will find a lot to enjoy in Netflix's How to Get to Heaven from Belfast, an eight-episode mystery-comedy from Derry Girls creator Lisa McGee. How to Get to Heaven from Belfast The Bottom Line Effective as both comedy and whodunit. Airdate: Thursday, February 12 (Netflix)Cast: Sinead Keenan, Caoilfhionn Dunne, Roisin Gallagher, Emmett J. Scanlan, Saoirse-Monica Jackson, Bonagh GallagherCreator: Lisa McGee It's simple enough to sum up the appeal of How to Get to Heaven from Belfast as Derry Girls + Murder. But that may not fully capture the somewhat sluggish stretch in the middle of the season when How to Get to Heaven from Belfast is too busy tying itself in mysterious knots to be funny at all - nor the strong conclusion in which the intricately plotted mystery pays off in ways that are far more serious and, if you want to read a little into it, far more thematically expansive than I initially expected. Related Stories Movies Berlin Rising Star Luna Wedler on Discovering Acting: "It Became My Great Love, Almost an Addiction" General News James Van Der Beek's GoFundMe Tops $1 Million in Under 24 Hours After His Death Some of the richness in How to Get to Heaven from Belfast can get lost in the intentional chaos and misdirection, while some of its tantalizing specificity may be generally lost on American viewers simply looking for a wild whodunit. But when the cast is this exceptional and the dialogue has this much manic crackle, whatever you take from the series ought to be enough. The season begins with a trio of lifelong 30-something friends getting some bad news that leaves them incredulous. Greta (Natasha O'Keeffe), the final member of what was briefly a close quartet, has died. Saoirse (Roisin Gallagher), the creator of a wildly popular television murder mystery that she's sick of, Dara (Caoilfhionn Dunne), stuck tending for her mum and still sad about the girlfriend who got away, and Robyn (Sinéad Keenan), on the verge of a breakdown tending to three unruly children, are more shocked than saddened. None of them has seen or spoken to Greta in 20 years, not since a Very Bad Thing That Happened teased in opening flashbacks featuring a remote cabin on fire. Whatever happened - it starts off seeming like it's going to be weirdly identical to the inciting event in Netflix's His & Hers, but it's not - left all three women slightly traumatized and totally unable to discuss the details. Responding to what they think is an invitation from Greta's sister-in-law, they leave their Belfast homes for a quick visit to the village of Knockdara, County Donegal, across the border. Their misadventures begin with innocent confusion over whether Robyn's new car takes diesel or petrol, which introduces them to Liam (Darragh Hand), a mechanic who doubles as a member of the local Garda (police, doncha know). At what they were told is Greta's wake, they meet Greta's stern husband Owen (Emmett J. Scanlan) and her stern-er therapist mother (Michelle Fairley), who are mighty perplexed at the arrival of three friends Greta never mentioned at a wake that isn't actually public. This is far from the oddest detail surrounding Greta's death, her life in Knockdara and the ongoing ripples from that Very Bad Thing That Happened 20 years earlier. The past, especially as it relates to Ireland and Northern Ireland, is never truly past, and unresolved traumas are rarely far from the surface. This, in How to Get to Heaven from Belfast, is both text and subtext. Especially when it comes to introducing the characters and the situation, the cadences of McGee's dialogue will be instantly familiar to anybody who loved Derry Girls. Characters talk fast, swear colorfully, fluster easily and verbally charge passionately into any circumstance, especially when they're wrong. Both the conversations and soundtrack are packed with British pop hits from the '90s and early '00s, especially the girl power anthems that fuel the series' brand of feminism. A lot of the characters themselves feel familiar as well. Robyn looks and frequently sounds like Saoirse-Monica Jackson, youthful ambitions sharpened into frustrated self-delusion. Dara has traces of Louisa Harland's Orla, a little bit spacey and insulated, though more by way of her Catholicism and loneliness than dreamy naïveté. Saoirse, then, is more like McGee herself, a vehicle fo