TV
On the bitter and the sweet: "Derry Girls" overcomes the troubles in a wonderful final season
In its last season, "Derry Girls" had to overcome a difficult problem: one of its main actresses was unavailable for a large part of the time.
It gives her a nasty disfigurement, but at the same time it also makes her focus on characters that have received less attention in the past, and the result is great.
Attention, mild spoilers for the final season
Ido Isaiah
08/10/2022
Saturday, October 8, 2022, 12:07 p.m. Updated: 12:34 p.m.
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Trailer for the third season of "Derry Girls" (Channel 4)
Please note, the review contains minor spoilers for the final season of "Derry Girls." "Derry Girls" ran
for a total of three seasons, the first two had six episodes and the last one, which premiered on Netflix on Friday, had seven.
You can understand.
It is difficult to continue describing the lives of girls while the cast that plays them is already deep into its fourth decade.
Few probably expected the series to become such a big hit.
Her ratings broke records, she is decorated with awards and titles both from industry people and from the audience, the critics - including us here - praise her.
In Derry, the city in Northern Ireland where the plot of the series takes place, there is a huge mural of the heroines of the series on Orchard Street, on the side of one of the local bars.
Her impact on pop culture also crossed the Atlantic Ocean and received a loving nod from "The Simpsons": in one of the episodes of the 33rd season, an ice cream shop called "Dairy Girls Ice Cream" is shown,
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Normal adolescence in an abnormal environment.
"Derry Girls" Season 3 (Photo: Channel 4)
If you've missed it so far, the series follows the stories and exploits of four girls and a little English boy during the last years of the conflict in Northern Ireland, in the poor and explosive city of Derry in the 1990s.
They were all born into this reality, that's all they knew.
Enmity between Catholics and Protestants, bomb threats - including ones that sometimes come true - and roadblocks.
But at the same time as all this, they also experience their usual and normal adolescence, including falling in love, fornication, hanging out with friends and dreams of self-fulfillment.
This built-in combination between the bitter and the sweet is the secret of the basic charm of "Derry Girls", along with the excellent chemistry between the heroines and the fact that it is one of the funniest series that has appeared on the television screen in recent years.
The huge success helped her to recruit impressive and happy guest appearances in its third and final season, which ended in May in the UK.
The first big guest arrives already in the first episode, a last surprising guest really closes the series, and in the middle there is a heartwarming meeting between two "Game of Thrones" graduates - one is, of course, Ian McElhinney, who plays Grandpa Joe in "Derry Girls", and the other plays a psychic The family members go to him in one of the episodes.
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continues to roll her eyes.
"Derry Girls" Season 3 (Photo: Channel 4)
But with all due respect to the guests, "Derry girls" did their part thanks to their regular players.
The girls themselves are excellent, not hesitating to embody the most extreme characteristics of their characters, such as the elastic faces of Erin (Sersha-Monica Jackson) or the constant over-dramatics of Claire (Nicola Cochlan, "Bridgerton").
Each of the girls brings a different flavor to the captivating connection between them, and this is one of the reasons that the third season, although it is much better than the previous one, includes a very bad flaw.
Scheduling constraints forced Cochlan to divide her time between "Derry Girls" and the second season of "Bridgerton". For example, in the third episode of the season, while everyone boards the train together, Claire is late and finds herself reluctantly waiting next to sister Michael In general, this is also a very lame episode - the story of the girls with the insufferable train attendant who refuses to sell them a Kit-Kat develops into a stupid and improbable climax, a duel between a banana and an electric toothbrush. Therefore, the forced division of their powers only adds to the artificial feeling.
Worse than that: in the festive finale special of the series, the one that is supposed to bring to light everything that made "Derry Girls" what it is, Claire's main communication with her friends is through phone calls.
This is a handicap that is difficult to overcome.
One of those who make up the girls named after the series, is not really there in the last line to be part of the mosaic.
Surely it would have been better to give her up in the earlier stages of the season so that she would be there with everyone at the end, and not just in one scene.
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And where is Claire?
"Derry Girls" Season 3 (Photo: Channel 4)
Still, as a testament to the ultimate strength of "Derry Girls," there are plenty of virtues to cover this problem, and most of the time this season is wonderful, including the final episode.
It includes moments that could be instantly sent to the Pantheon, such as the girls' performance of their local version of "Stars in the Eyes" and the competition they received from Jenny Joyce and her minion, who turns out to have an angelic voice;
Or the moment when Uncle Colm (Kevin McAleer) is revealed for the first time in the season.
He has been a kind of secret weapon of "Derry Girls" since its beginning, and what is so great this time is that the girls themselves recognize him as such and help him, in a scene that is one of the most heartbreaking in the entire series.
Coechlan's shortcoming is masked through a creative choice that upgrades the series even more than before: using the more mature cast.
Although Erin's parents and grandfather (and uncle) were of course there from the beginning, but in the last season they get almost equal screen time to the girls, and the result is brilliant on several levels.
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A spin-off is urgently needed.
"Derry Girls" Season 3 (Photo: Channel 4)
McElhinney himself continues to be formidable with his constant and unjustified animosity towards his son-in-law.
Tommy Tiernan continues to perfectly portray that groom, Joe, who stands as a solid and rather stoic rock when all around him is a never-ending frenzy.
A significant factor in the psychosis is of course his sister-in-law Sarah (Kathy Kira Clark), a being whose incredible level of detachment from reality provides some of the funniest moments in the new season.
In the school sector, Sister Michael (Shibon McSweeney) continues to provide eye rolls and hysterical impatience towards her students and towards the priest of the institution.
The presence of the adult group most of the time exceeds the adventures of the girls, and reaches its peak in the fifth and perfect episode, from which the young cast is almost completely absent.
As part of it, the parents go to their high school class meeting, and the mothers remember their shared and sultry past (which justifies a spin-off in itself).
In this way "Derry Girls" anchors its eternity.
It's not just the Derry girls of the nineties, but all the girls of all times.
Even in 1977, when the local conflict was even more dangerous and raging, teenage girls were still interested in what young women their age were interested in - music, love, friendship and rebellion against authority.
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Intergenerational chain.
"Derry Girls" Season 3 (Photo: Channel 4)
This intergenerational chain makes it clear that there are circles that will be preserved forever, and on the other hand, there are those that can be broken for the sake of a better future.
Even in this season, which depicts a period when the hostility in Northern Ireland began to subside towards the peace agreement, "Derry Girls" emphasized the roughness that always lurks around the corners of the lives of the heroines.
For example, a neighbor who was released after years in prison because of her actions in the Irish underground, or in another case, someone who is even closer to the lives of the heroines, one whose attitude towards him creates a real rift between them in preparation for the referendum on the Good Friday Agreement.
Grandpa Joe gives a wise and beautiful advice to Erin before she decides what to choose, one that demonstrates the promise that nevertheless exists in the lives of the heroines, the one that paints in nostalgic colors even a problematic period like this one in which they had to grow up.
And shortly after, in a beautiful scene that I don't know if it was planned that way or was born by chance, as the family exits the voting hall, the hand of Anna, Erin's little sister, is in her grandfather's hand.
She skips, the clearly young actress feels comfortable and fun with him, and he cooperates with her and skips too.
Hand in hand they make their way out, the generation that is passing and felt the fullness of the time of trouble, and the next generation that will no longer remember anything from them.
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