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Watching TV with Mystery Man #2: Adolescence

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As is often the case with this blog, I’m writing about something sometime after the initial hype and attention surrounding it has died down a little, in this case the Netflix drama Adolescence, which caused such a stir that there were memes about people being arrested for not watching it, reflecting the reaction by certain people in the media to Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch having not watched the show.

So widespread was the attention given to the series that Prime Minister Kier Starmer advocated it being shown to school children across the country. Considering that the main focus of this blog is issues relating to men and boys, I felt I at least needed to watch the series to see what all the hype was about.

The series depicts the case of a 13 year old boy named Jamie being arrested for the killing of a girl of the same age named Katie which appeared to have been sparked by comments made online.

The series is divided into four episodes all about an hour long and which were filmed as a single, uncut take. I’ll write briefly about each episode individually so be prepared for SPOILERS if you are at all interested in watching the series.

Episode 1:

The first episode shows the arrest of Jamie early in the morning following the killing of Katie the evening before. We follow the DCI and DC as they and the police storm into Jamie’s family home to arrest him and take him to the police station. The camera follows Jamie as he is questioned by the police officer at reception where he chooses his father, Eddie, played by Stephen Graham, as his ‘appropriate adult’ and then subsequently meets the solicitor assigned to him. Following this, we see part of Jamie’s physical inspection and then finally his questioning by the DCI and DC about the murder. Jamie frequently denies to his father and the police that he killed Katie but the police eventually show Jamie and his father footage of Jamie attacking Katie on CCTV.

I think the single take technique works pretty well here as we, the audience, are like a fly on the wall watching the police procedural methods leading to Jamie’s interrogation at the end of the episode.

Episode 2:

The second episode, titled ‘Day 3’, follows the DCI and DC as they walk around Jamie’s school to question Jamie’s friends and one of Katie’s friends about the incident and what led to it. We witness the dysfunctions of the school as many of the children are noisy and undisciplined, the teachers are ineffective or not interested and the children spend most of the time watching videos rather than being taught by the teacher. Near the end of the episode, the DCI’s son, Adam, who attends the school, informs his father that Katie had messaged Jamie on Instagram and sent him emojis such as an exploding red pill implying that Jamie was an incel or involuntary celibate. This was in response to Jamie posting explicit comments about female models. It is revealed at the end of the episode that Jamie got a knife from his friend Tommy which may have been the murder weapon.

In this episode, I thought the single take style felt much more of a gimmick and was not really needed here. There were some moments in the episode which seemed to me to have been written simply to utilise the single take technique such as the fire alarm going off leading us to follow the characters outside. Later, the DCI chases after Jamie’s friend Tommy after he jumps out of the (ground floor) window when the DCI decides to question him again. This moment also seemed like it was just included to make use of the single take to create some action.

That being said, the episode concludes with an ambitious tracking shot of the camera moving above the school (by drone I assume) and moving towards the site of Katie’s death where Eddie, who only appears at the end of the episode, leaving some flowers at the memorial made for her.

Episode 3:

The third episode, which appears to have generated the most attention online as well as in the media, takes place 7 months after the murder and follows a psychologist named Briony, played by Erin Doherty, interviewing Jamie at a ‘training facility’ where she is providing an assessment of his case. After some initial jovial talk, Jamie becomes aggressive and threatening at times and tries to intimidate the psychologist. Briony asks him about his relationship with his father and his feelings about masculinity. Jamie mentions his father taking him to football matches although he did not enjoy it and there is some more talk about the online comments Katie had sent to Jamie. There is mention of the ’80-20 rule’ which Jamie agrees with. It is revealed in this episode that Katie’s comments on Jamie’s Instagram were in response to Jamie asking Katie out after a topless photo of her was circulated, causing Jamie to believe that she would feel vulnerable and accept. Instead, Katie rejected Jamie. At the end of the episode, Briony tells Jamie that this would be their last encounter which causes Jamie to becomes agitated and aggressive again.

From my own limited experience of encountering mental health patients, Jamie appeared to me to display symptoms of a personality disorder or some other psychological problem which makes the idea of Jamie being radicalised by the ‘manosphere’ unconvincing. This also makes the idea of Jamie being a representative of modern teenage boys also unconvincing and a little sensationalised.

Episode 4:

The final episode takes place on Eddie’s 50th birthday, 13 months after the killing and follows Jamie’s parents as they try to deal with the aftermath of their son’s crime. The atmosphere is initially light-hearted until Eddie and Manda’s daughter Lisa discovers that some other boys had spray-painted the word ‘nonce’ on Eddie’s work van. He decides to go to a hardware shop to buy some cleaning products to wipe the spray paint off but buys some paint instead. The man in the shop recognises him and says that he believes that his son is innocent. This causes Eddie to become agitated, which is exacerbated when he sees the boys who spray-painted his car outside the shop and attacks them. On the drive home, Jamie calls his father to wish him Happy Birthday and tells him he’s decided to change his plea from innocent to guilty. When the family return home Eddie questions if he is responsible for Jamie’s actions and we learn that Eddie’s father beat him as a child.

The series ends with Eddie bursting into tears as he looks around Jamie’s bedroom and tucks in a teddy bear on Jamie’s bed, essentially a surrogate for Jamie, and apologises to it.

Similar to Episode 2, the use of a single take again felt a bit unnecessary in this episode although it worked better here than in the school.

Summary:

Overall, Adolescence is a mini-series that has more style than substance. While the use of a single continuous shot in all four episodes was certainly impressive, it worked better in the self-contained environments of the police station and facility shown respectively in the first and third episodes than in the second and fourth ones. This technique is also not as ground-breaking as some people think. Alfred Hitchcock, after all, used a similar style in his film Rope back in 1948, albeit as a series of long takes stitched together. Other films which have used the same technique include 1917, Russian Ark and Boiling Point (which also stars Stephen Graham).

Similarly, while the acting was impressive for the most part, the content was fairly pedestrian. As I noted above, Jamie seemed to have some psychological issues which would contribute to his violent crime, but the series and the general reaction towards it implies that Jamie was a normal boy who turned violent by what he was viewing online. As Janice Fiamengo notes in her review of the show on her Substack, despite references to the ‘manosphere’ and Andrew Tate, the show never explores these topics beyond a brief mention, and takes aim at masculinity instead. The series implies that Jamie’s aggressive behaviour is a product of seeing his father’s own outbursts of anger, such as on one occasion destroying the family shed.

A cynical person might suggest that the inclusion of conversations about the internet was simply a way to draw viewers to the show rather than attempting any meaningful explanation to issues that affect boys like Jamie.

Adolescence could have easily just been a TV drama about a teenage boy killing a teenage girl and how his parents and the community react to it; the kind of drama you might watch on a Sunday evening on ITV. It may have received acclaim for its technical achievements and acting but wouldn’t have had the hype surrounding it had it not jumped on the toxic masculinity bandwagon.

In short, don’t feel like you have to watch this series unless you absolutely want to.

Watching TV with Mystery Man #1: Derry Girls (Part 3)

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Derry Girls is also interesting in its portrayal of fathers and father figures although we only see Erin’s and Claire’s fathers on the show. Unlike in many sitcoms, in which fathers are usually depicted as stupid, incompetent, selfish, crude or all the above, Gerry, Erin’s father, is often the most sensible member of the adult characters, who make up their own ‘gang’ alongside the main teenage characters. This group is usually the focus of the show’s subplots and consists of Erin’s parents Gerry and Mary, her Aunt Sarah and her grandfather Joe. In this group, Gerry is usually the voice of reason and often gets ridiculed and shouted down by the others, particularly his father-in-law Joe who has an intense dislike for Gerry.

Although Gerry has shades of the ‘henpecked husband’ comic stereotype – Mary is usually the more dominant parent towards Erin, reflecting the so-called ‘mammy culture’ prominent in Derry, or as Erin puts it in one episode: “Da’s (Dads) are in the pocket of Ma’s (Mums)” – Gerry is usually able to stand up for himself and Mary often tries to defend him from her father.

In Series 2 episode 3, the girls and James want to go to see the 90s boy band Take That in Belfast but are forbidden from going because there is an escaped polar bear on the loose (yes really). The girls try to talk Mary into letting them go (as Orla points out, the polar bear wouldn’t be able to get a ticket to the concert – “they sold out months ago!”) but Mary refuses. While Mary, Joe and Sarah are worried about the polar bear, Gerry believes their fear is overblown:

Gerry: The concert’s nowhere near the zoo.

Joe: But he’s not in the zoo anymore, is he, Simple Simon? He’s sauntering around Belfast, without a care in the world!

Sarah: Aye, keep up Gerry!

Gerry: What I’m saying is that it would be quite a lot of ground for him to cover.

Mary: They’re quick on their feet when they want to be, love.

The girls (and James) manage to get to the Belfast concert alone by tricking their mothers into thinking they are going to each other’s houses. The mothers realise at the end of the episode what their children have done and vow to punish them if they can get proof the girls have gone to the concert. Gerry, watching TV in the living room, sees his daughter and her friends during news coverage of the concert and just laughs quietly, implying he never tells his wife and the other mothers what he’s seen and is given a rare ‘win’ in the series.

James, like Gerry, performs a similar function in the main group of characters in that he is a bit of a punching bag for the others – particularly his cousin Michelle – but who often acts as a voice of reason as well. In Series 1 episode 2, Michelle accidentally sets some curtains on fire and tries to put out the fire by pouring alcohol on it! Although Erin points out the stupidity of this, it is James who thinks about getting a fire extinguisher to put it out. However, unlike, Gerry, James is less willing to stand up for himself possibly because he is more of a fish out of water having grown up in London rather than Derry. James nearly returns to London when his mother comes to see him and the girls are visibly upset at the news showing their fondness for him. Michelle, despite constantly berating James, convinces him to stay and tells him he’s a ‘Derry girl’ now.

Erin’s and Orla’s grandad Joe is also portrayed as a respected father figure. He is often seen looking after Erin’s baby sister and is looked up to by his granddaughters and daughters. An episode in the second series shows the girls attending a 1950s style American prom at their school and, as it’s an all-girls school, they have to invite a boy to attend the prom. Orla, takes her grandad Joe and says: “everyone kept saying you had to take a fella you really like and he’s the fella I like the most.”

Although Joe is regularly rude and hostile towards his son-in-law Gerry, which may mean he comes across to some viewers as an unlikeable bully, it is implied that Joe likes Gerry more than he lets on. A scene in the last episode of the first series shows the adults solemnly watching news on TV of a bomb attack. Joe comes in behind Gerry and puts his hand on Gerry’s shoulder – a nice piece of subtlety which is more effective than if Joe was shown openly expressing any affection towards him. One episode in the first series suggests that Joe feels competitive towards Gerry over who is the ‘man’ in the family of mainly women which might explain some of his belligerence towards his son-in-law.

In the final episode, which is set during the Good Friday agreement, Erin asks her grandad for advice on how to vote in the referendum on the agreement (this vote again is something I didn’t realise happened until I watched this show) as she is undecided. Erin asks Joe what if it’s doesn’t work and Joe responds:

“And what if it does? What if no one else has to die? What if all this becomes a ghost story you’ll tell your wains one day? Hmm? A ghost story they’ll hardly believe.”

The clip can be watched here.

Joe comes across here as a wise old patriarch whose advice Erin presumably takes. This is likely reflected in Lisa McGee’s own feelings of the Good Friday agreement – that it was ultimately a good thing. Columnists such as Peter Hitchens however, have viewed the agreement as an act of capitulation and surrender to the IRA on the part of the British as he explains here. As I said, I don’t enough about the Troubles to have a strong position either way but I can see both sides of this argument.

I was still a child when the Good Friday agreement was signed in 1998 which effectively ended the Troubles (although I only found out recently that the Omagh bombing occurred afterwards) so I don’t remember hearing about the conflict in Northern Ireland in the news and only experienced it in retrospect from lessons in school and college – this included having to watch the film Bloody Sunday in different classes on no less than 3 occasions! 

Other male characters on the show include Erin’s Great Uncle (and Joe’s brother) Colm, the young “down with the kids” priest Father Peter, cousin Eamonn (mentioned previously) and the unhinged corner shop keeper Dennis. Rather than being laughed at for being men, these male characters are funny because of their individual personalities. Uncle Colm, for example, is a man so boring that he makes a dramatic story about some IRA men who ambush him in his own home, tie him to a radiator and steal his van sound tedious to his listeners. This is also another example of the show’s contrasting the mundane with the dramatic as described in the first part.

Having looked at Lisa McGee’s Twitter/X page, she has all the ‘right on’ politics you would expect from a TV writer – i.e. feminist, pro-EU, etc. – and she appears to be friendly with certain establishment political figures such as Chelsea Clinton, the daughter of Bill and Hillary Clinton which led to a rather pointless cameo by Chelsea Clinton in the final episode (a reference to a previous episode set during Bill Clinton’s visit to Derry in 1995). That being said, McGee’s portrayal of male and female characters suggests to me that she likes at least some men and doesn’t have a chip on her shoulder about women’s issues.

McGee’s writing reminds me a little bit of that of John Sullivan, the writer of the classic sitcom Only Fools and Horses in that both shows feature memorable and larger-than-life characters who you can imagine being real people – and are no doubt based on real people – and who are specific to their respective locations of Derry and London. In other words, you cannot picture these characters existing in a different setting to the one they inhabit.

I expect teenagers in the future will be shown Derry Girls during lessons about the Troubles much like I had to watch Bloody Sunday although they may have a better time watching a sitcom than I did watching that particular film. I think the show will be remembered in years to come much like Father Ted still has a loyal cult following partly because Derry Girls already takes place in the past so will not be considered dated.

The show also does a good job of portraying female friendships without it coming across as solidarity against oppressive men unlike other films/TV shows I’ve come across which focus on women. This is probably because Northern Irish women (and men) had more important things to worry about such as whether they or their loved ones could be killed in a bomb attack rather than trivial feminist concerns like if there were enough women fighting in the IRA or British Army.

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Watching TV with Mystery Man #1: Derry Girls (Part 2)

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As already mentioned, Derry Girls writer Lisa McGee is not afraid to make jokes at the expense of female characters like the teenage protagonists. Although there is a lot of talk about how supposedly more mature girls are than boys – which, even if this is true, is still not mature compared to older people – Derry Girls portrays teenage girls like Erin, Claire, Michelle and Orla as being impulsive, melodramatic, childish, delusional, and troublemaking.

Erin, for example, is a social justice warrior before the word had ever been coined. Although she portrays herself as worldly wise and progressive in her thinking, she quickly reverts to the opposite behaviour if she is placed in a situation where she must walk the walk as well as talk the talk. In one episode, Erin is working on the school newspaper and finds a story written by one of the pupils confessing anonymously to being a lesbian. This is later revealed to be Erin’s best friend Claire (because, it seems, all shows nowadays are required to have a least one gay character). Despite Erin campaigning for ‘gay rights’ at the school, as soon as Claire ‘comes out’ to Erin by revealing that she wrote the essay, Erin tells her “don’t come out, go back in!” and assumes Claire is attracted to her saying “I’m not interested in you, not like that!”

Another episode features the characters encountering some gypsies but Erin insists that the gypsies should be called “travellers” and that it is “insulting” and “racist” to call them gypsies. When one of the gypsy/traveller men approaches the characters however, Erin and the others instantly feel threatened and start to run away.

Erin’s best friend Claire is the most sensible of the girls but is also prone to been easily stressed and hysterical. Like many teenagers, when Claire is teased for being too boring and level-headed, or, as the girls put it, a “crack-killer”, she will act out in response. While I noted above that gay characters on films and TV shows have become so ubiquitous that it sometimes feels like there is a diversity quota at work, Claire is a character who just happens to be a lesbian rather than a ‘lesbian character’. In other words, her sexuality is only a small aspect of her overall personality and is largely unimportant.

Erin and Claire’s other friend Michelle is the most impulsive and rebellious of the four and is the one most likely to get the other characters into trouble. As well as her preoccupation with sex, Michelle is also frequently belligerent towards her cousin James who she resents partly for his Englishness and her being forced to live with him.

Erin’s cousin Orla is the simplest and oddest of the girls and is usually unaware of or indifferent to what is going on around her, much to Erin’s annoyance.

The show is also, to use a modern phrase, very ‘heteronormative’ compared to other contemporary female-driven shows. Unlike Claire, who’s gay, and Orla, who is child-like and thus asexual, both Erin and Michelle are shown to be attracted to men and boys their own age and try to get their attention. In the first episode of Series 2, the All-Girls school goes on a trip to collaborate with an All-Boys Protestant school at a ‘friends across the barricades’ event which leads to Erin and Michelle attempting to pull some of the boys. Here there is another subversion of a common trope – instead of teenage boys embarrassing themselves to impress/get off with the opposite sex who are portrayed as more sensible and level-headed, it is the girls who make fools of themselves and cause the boys to be unimpressed.

Here’s one exchange:

Sister Michael: OK, listen up people, according to this you’re going to need a, well, they use the term ‘buddy’, for tomorrow’s activities

Michelle: I bagsy Harry

Erin: What, but that’s not fair, he’s the only good looking one!

Dee: The rest of us are right here.

Michelle: You snooze, you lose Erin.

Erin: (To Dee) I suppose I’ll have you, then.

Dee: Aren’t you a charmer.

Later, Erin awkwardly tries to ‘come on’ to Dee and he tells her he thought she was having “some sort of breakdown” when she advances towards him. It could be argued that this is unrealistic given that teenage boys/men have a higher sex drive than teenage girls/women and so are more desperate to ‘score’ (as characters like Beavis and Butthead would put it) with the opposite sex – a teenage girl like Erin making advances towards a 16 year old me would be like all my Christmases come at once –however I think this makes more sense within the context of the situation. Erin had effectively insulted Dee previously as shown in the above exchange and Northern Ireland in the 1990s would have been a more religious place than it is now so the boys may well have been told that sexually assertive girls like Michelle (and to a lesser extent) Erin were bad news. Also, Harry – whom Erin and Michelle both fancy – wears a purity bracelet indicating a pledge to have no sex before marriage and he turns down Michelle’s offer to “go somewhere more private” in the same scene.

Despite the girls’ flaws, they are still likable characters and are shown to be caring and supportive towards each other, especially in the show’s more dramatic moments.

While Erin’s and Orla’s mothers, Mary and Sarah (who shares her daughter Orla’s general cluelessness) are shown to be caring and attentive parents, Lisa McGee is also not afraid to portray certain mother characters in an unflattering light. In one episode, Mary and Sarah’s aunt Bridie – their mother’s sister who, according to their father Joe, “couldn’t stick her” – makes an appearance at a family wedding and is depicted as being a sour and possessive mother to her son Eammon (portrayed by Father Dougal himself Ardal O’Hanlon).

I like this exchange when we are first introduced to Bridie and Eammon. Mary asks her cousin if he’s seeing anyone and if there is another wedding on the cards:

Eammon: I’m not seeing anyone.

Mary: Plenty of time, I suppose.

Bridie: Eammon’ll never marry.

Gerry: Is that a feeling, Bridie, or an instruction?

Mary and Bridie have a confrontation later on and Mary tells her: “Drop dead, you spiteful old hag!” which Bridie subsequently does!

James’ mother (and Michelle’s aunt) Cathy makes her only appearance in the show during the last episode of Series 2 and is another mother who is not portrayed favourably. Before James was born, Cathy had left Northern Ireland to have an abortion in England but instead chose to have James (“lucky for you eh James!” as Michelle says in the first episode!) and stay in London. It is hinted that Cathy left James with her sister (and Michelle’s mother) in Northern Ireland shortly after getting divorced from James’ stepfather suggesting that she was not prepared to look after James by herself. This is disapproved of by Mary who believes Cathy “abandoned her wain.”

Cathy has only one prominent scene in the episode she appears in but it’s testament to how good both the writing and acting is in this scene that we get a sufficient understanding of her character from it.

Cathy speaks in a Northern-Irish/English hybrid accent (which may well be an affectation) and has little affection for the city she left for London. A commenter on the YouTube video of this scene makes a good point that, while Cathy is affectionate towards her son, she barely looks at him whereas James always looks at her. This suggests that her affection for him, like a lot of things about her, is very shallow.

In the previous episode James mentions that he used to watch Doctor Who with his stepfather when he was little suggesting that Cathy’s husband made an effort to be involved in James’ life despite James not being his biological son. Many single mothers like Cathy would be grateful to marry a man who was willing to take on raising a child that wasn’t their own but Cathy explains:

Cathy: Paul, my ex, well, he just became so controlling.

Mary: Jesus, really?

Cathy: He was unbearable towards the end. It was always, ‘Oh Cathy, why did you stay out all night?’ or ‘Who was that man you were having dinner with, Cathy?’. He was very insecure.

Mary: Wonder why.

Cathy: I mean James’ father was the same. I just seem to attract the possessive, jealous types. I don’t know what it is.

This is the only occasion when James’ father is mentioned and since very little information is revealed about him, we could speculate on his involvement with Cathy. Is James’ real father even aware James exists? Is Cathy sure that the man she calls James’ father really is his father?

Although there is constant talk about ‘feckless fathers’ there is rarely discussion about men who form a relationship with a single mother and become close to her children, only for the mother to leave the man and sever the relationship he has with her children. Could such women be called ‘feckless mothers’?

You can watch the scene in question here (the relevant bit starts around 1:26)

Although Cathy is not an entirely bad character (she did, after all, decide to keep James rather than have an abortion) she is certainly self-centred and superficial. Perhaps because Lisa McGee isn’t focussed on feminism in the show, we get a depiction of a single mother that many feminists and modern viewers would be uncomfortable with in a different context.

After the girls and their mothers, the most notable female character in Derry Girls is the headteacher of their school, Sister Michael. Sister Michael is a nun who acts as a kind of authority figure towards the girls but is also a bit of a rebellious figure in her own right. For example, it is hinted in one episode that Sister Michael doesn’t really believe in God and she is shown in another episode to be subtly supportive of the girls’ efforts to get Claire’s anonymous essay confessing to being a lesbian published in the school paper despite publicly opposing it. This indicates the show’s more progressive or ‘woke’ leanings, but, as with the Troubles, religion in Derry Girls is more in the background albeit a prominent feature of the characters’ lives.

Watching TV with Mystery Man #1: Derry Girls (Part 1)

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The late writer Christopher Hitchens once caused controversy by suggesting in an article for Vanity Fair that women weren’t as funny as men because, unlike men, women didn’t have to learn to be funny to impress the opposite sex. Not surprisingly, this caused a stir and led to an angry response from many female comedians. Whatever the veracity of Hitchens’ argument, in recent years, there has been an increase in female-written and female-led sitcoms on our TV screens including Fleabag, Girls and the Channel 4 sitcom Derry Girls.

Like its fellow Irish sitcom Father Ted, Derry Girls has become one of Channel 4’s most successful comedies and has even fans such as the legendary film director Martin Scorsese. The show depicts the lives of four teenage girls from Derry (or Londonderry) and an English boy during the last years of the ‘Troubles’ in 1990s Northern Ireland. The ‘Derry Girls’ consists of Erin, her eccentric cousin Orla, their friends Claire and Michelle, and Michelle’s English cousin James. The characters attend an All-Girls Catholic School (which James is forced to go to as well) and this school, in addition to Erin’s family home, is where most of the series takes place. The other primary characters include Erin’s parents Mary and Gerry, her Aunt Sarah (Mary’s sister and Orla’s mother), her Grandad Joe (Mary and Sarah’s father) and the headmistress of her school, Sister Michael.

I stumbled upon the show on TV and initially watched it, I’m embarrassed to say, due to fancying the actress who plays Erin, Saoirse-Monica Jackson. This could sound dodgy considering that Erin is a sixteen-year-old girl but in real life Jackson is only three years younger than me. I’ll include a link to a photo of her (obviously helped by make-up and photography techniques) to see if the reader can see any appeal.

https://popularnetworth.com/saoirse-monica-jackson

Although Derry Girls is a female-dominated show (no surprise there) created and written by a woman, Lisa McGee, it is, for me, one of the few recent TV shows/films to have this distinction which can be watched and enjoyed by men, even those who consider themselves, as I do, to be ‘red-pilled’ about feminist dominance and misandry in popular culture. This is largely because the show inverts the standard trope of ‘stupid men/boys, sensible women/girls’ found in a lot of comedy so that most of the female characters are the butt of the joke rather than just the male ones. The show can be compared slightly to another successful Channel 4 sitcom, The Inbetweeners, and is probably the closest there will ever be to a female equivalent. Erin, being the main character, bears some similarity to the character of Will in The Inbetweeners, whilst James is similar to Simon, the sex-obsessed Michelle bearing some similarities to Jay and the simple/childlike Orla being like Neil.

The show is also unusual for having a group of female characters with one token male character again inverting a common trope of a token female character with a group of male characters seen in sitcoms like Seinfeld, 3rd Rock from the Sun, Black Books, The IT Crowd and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. The fact that the token female example is a lot more common (and is also evident in many pop/rock bands) might indicate that it’s easier for a woman to be part of a predominantly male group than the opposite. Whatever the truth of these mixed-sex group dynamics might be a topic for another day, however.

Derry Girls is also different from most contemporary female-driven comedies in its source of humour. Rather than being a soapbox for women’s issues, much of the humour of the show is driven by the main characters’ focus on their humdrum adolescent experiences in contrast to the dramatic backdrop of the decades-long conflict in Northern Ireland. The girls live with the occasional threat of bombs and British soldiers patrolling parts of the city but spend most of their time behaving like teenagers and having the same thoughts and desires as other girls/boys their age in other parts of the world. The adults of the show are no different: roads which are closed off due to a potential bomb threat are treated like annoying inconveniences much like a traffic jam might be; in one episode a neighbour shows the girls his new double glazed windows while the Protestant Orange Order can be heard marching outside. In another episode, following a news report on TV about peace talks breaking down, Erin’s mother, Mary, complains:

“I can’t take it anymore. All these false promises. Waiting week after week hoping today might be the day, only to be disappointed.”

It turns out, however, that she’s talking about not getting a wheely bin promised by the council rather than reacting to the news. This, in some ways, reflects how historical events actually occur: a major news story is reported on TV/radio/internet providing the background noise whilst most people deal with their own mundane existences.

This generally nonchalant attitude of the characters to the conflict is not to suggest that the show downgrades or mocks the seriousness of the Troubles as there are moments where the show takes a more somber tone. Lisa McGee, having grown up in Derry, based the series on her own experiences so the behaviour of Erin’s family and others is likely a reflection of how people acted at the time. It could be argued that this depiction is a kind of commentary about how violent and drawn out the conflict had become that people were forced to adapt to it. In this regard, Derry Girls could be labelled a comedy drama rather than a sitcom.

Another source of humour in Derry Girls, and a likely contributor to the show’s popularity, is the idiosyncrasies of Derry and its inhabitants. While I’ve never liked the assertion that ‘X’ location is “another character in the film/TV show”– in this case, “Derry is another character in the show” – as I think it’s the sort of empty platitude critics like to say to sound clever and insightful, the location certainly makes the show distinctive, not least in the characters’ accents and slang words. Outsiders may need subtitles and a glossary to work out what the characters are saying at times. Words like “now” and “car” are pronounced “noy” and “cyah” for example (if that sounds a bit patronising, I’m from Yorkshire so feel free to read this in a mock ‘ee by gum’ voice).

Examples of slang prominent in the show include calling sex or an attractive person a ‘ride’, a stupid person is a ‘dose’, to be sick/throw up is to ‘boke’, an expression similar to ‘pull the other one!’ is “catch yourself on”, a child or young person is a “wain” (i.e. – wee ‘un – wee one – little one – child) and anything good is ‘cracker’. While the accent and slang may alienate some viewers, for many others it makes the show and characters unique and interesting. Without getting too political, the desire and appeal for distinctive places and people as shown here is, I believe, one of the motivations driving the nationalist impulses that led to Brexit and Donald Trump even if many fans of Derry Girls, and the writer Lisa McGee, are in opposition to both these political events.