Review of Derry Girls — Season One

For the longest time, I was told to watch Derry Girls. But because there was a hot minute (or a couple of years) that I would consider myself to be television averse, I avoided watching this show.

Lately, I have been on such a television kick. You’d notice if you follow this blog and click on my category for television reviews—I am all over television shows lately, and it’s because the seasons are getting shorter and limited series are becoming a bigger thing nowadays.

I used to hate television because of the long and multiple seasons, but I am calling the limited series boom my Renaissance. I am living in my television golden era. That said, I finally got around to watching the first season of Derry Girls because of this.

I didn’t try to cram the entire season in one week. Instead, I savored each episode slowly, even though they’re not that long and I find the length of them to be shorter than some of the Korean dramas I watched.

Here’s my review!

A group of students attending Catholic school in Derry have their coming-of-age during the Troubles.

The Troubles have been something I’ve tried to learn about more in recent years, and I have consumed different kinds of books and movies about these experiences. Before watching movies like Belfast, I had no idea what the Troubles were or why they were historically significant.

That said, I feel like if you knew nothing about the Troubles, you might not understand fully what you’re watching and its context.

There are some jokes and scenes where knowing the historical context, or Googling it at the very minimum, would make certain things make more sense or land better.

Anyways, we focus on this through the lens of a group of students: Erin, Orla, Clare, Michelle, and James. All are girls except for James, who moved from England and is now the only boy at an all-girls’ school.

Unfortunately, this means he cannot find a bathroom that isn’t for girls, a gag when they end up going to detention and he needs to pee.

While these kids are doing typical teenager things at times, talking about their crushes and trying to get girls to give up their seats on the bus due to seniority, there are a lot of antics involved with this crew.

Whether it’s a nun dying while watching over them, or falling in love with a hot priest, there’s plenty in this show.

I’d define this as a comedy, and it’s pretty digestible throughout each season. There are only like 19 episodes total when I am writing this, and if I did not want to take my time, I could have finished this really quickly.

Overall Thoughts

Honestly, I really enjoyed this show! I think if it were longer I might not have been as invested as I was in it, but I thought that for this period of time, I really liked it overall.

I’ll probably take my sweet time in getting to the later seasons, as I’ve finally started watching Sex in the City, but I’m glad I got the ball rolling on this round of watching it.

Go see it if you haven’t already.

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