How to Get to Heaven from Belfast Review: Lisa McGee's Darker Post-Derry Girls
★★★★½ 4.5/5
Certified Fresh Belfast noir with Derry Girls wit — ended season one, eight episodes, worth a weekend.
Is How to Get to Heaven from Belfast good?
Yes — 95% critics, 86% audiences, Metascore 79, and IMDb 7.9 make it Netflix UK’s strongest 2026 launch on Celluloid. How to Get to Heaven from Belfast reunites Roisin Gallagher, Sinéad Keenan, and Caoilfhionn Dunne as lifelong friends whose funeral plans spiral into murder, secrets, and the kind of chaos only Lisa McGee could make feel like home. Eight episodes, season one ended — no cliffhanger hostage tactics.
How is it different from Derry Girls?
Same city, sharper knives — McGee trades nostalgia for noir-adjacent stakes without losing joke density. Jamie-Lee O’Donnell widens the ensemble; the thriller plotting is real even when the tone stays comic. Fan score 85 reflects solid affection; it is not Widow’s Bay’s 98% Tomatometer heat, but UK readers should start here for 2026 local voice.
UK on the 2026 TV map
Browse United Kingdom alongside Jack Thorne’s Lord of the Flies — two 2026 Netflix/UK adaptations, two temperatures. The live chart lives at /best/2026/#top-tv; the long read is Best TV of 2026. For film overlap, Marcus Webb’s Bone Temple covers British theatrical horror in the same quarter.
Verdict
Heaven from Belfast is the UK answer to Apple’s comedy-thriller dominance — essential if you miss Derry Girls and want stakes. Ended cleanly; binge-friendly; morally messy in the best McGee tradition.