Which Derry Girls Character Are You?

Learn More About Derry Girls

Derry Girls ran for three series on Channel 4 between 2018 and 2022 and became, almost accidentally, one of the most beloved British sitcoms of its era. Created and written entirely by Lisa McGee, who grew up in Derry during the period the show depicts, it holds the distinction of being the most-watched series in Northern Ireland since modern records began.

The setup is deceptively ordinary. Five teenagers attend a Catholic girls grammar school in Derry in the mid-1990s. They worry about exams, crushes, getting into concerts, and whether they can get away with things. The complication is that all of this is happening during the final years of the Troubles, with checkpoints, bomb scares, and British Army patrols treated by the characters as tedious background noise rather than drama.

That tonal choice is the show's masterstroke. A bomb on the bridge is an inconvenience because it makes them late. A soldier searching the bus is an opportunity for Michelle to flirt. The comedy works precisely because the teenagers are entirely self-absorbed in the way teenagers actually are, and the political catastrophe surrounding them registers mainly as an obstacle to their social lives. McGee has said this reflects her genuine memory of the period.

The ensemble is tightly drawn. Erin Quinn is the self-appointed protagonist of her own life, prone to grand pronouncements and convinced of her own artistic depth. Her cousin Orla McCool operates on a frequency nobody else can access and is completely unbothered about it. Clare Devlin is a bundle of anxiety and rules who cracks under the mildest pressure. Michelle Mallon is crude, fearless, and the engine of every bad decision. And James Maguire, Michelle's English cousin, is enrolled at the girls school because the boys school was deemed unsafe for him, making him the wee English fella of relentless abuse.

The adults are just as good. Sister Michael, played by Siobhan McSweeney, is a headmistress of magnificent, withering indifference who became an instant icon. Erin's parents Mary and Gerry, her Aunt Sarah, and the perpetually furious Granda Joe fill out a household where everyone talks over everyone.

The show's final moments moved a great many people who had come for the jokes. The last episode jumps forward to 1998 and the referendum on the Good Friday Agreement, and the teenagers, now old enough to vote, have to decide whether to gamble on peace. McGee lets the comedy drop away almost entirely, and the show's willingness to earn that shift is why it lands.

It also functions as an unusually precise 1990s time capsule, wall to wall with Take That, The Cranberries, Salt-N-Pepa, and a soundtrack budget that Channel 4 evidently did not begrudge. The period detail is affectionate rather than nostalgic, and the Derry accents were strong enough that some international viewers watched with subtitles and considered it worth the effort.

For more shows about teenagers making questionable choices, try Which Sex Education Character Are You?, Which Heartstopper Character Are You?, or Which Never Have I Ever Character Are You?.