5 Reasons to Watch ‘How to Get to Heaven From Belfast’

Reuniting with old friends has rarely been more fraught than it is in the new Irish TV series How to Get to Heaven from Belfast, which premiered on Netflix early in 2026. 

Saoirse Shaw (Roisin Gallagher), Robyn Winters (Sinéad Keenan), and Dara Friel (Caoilfhionn Dunne), once close friends in their teen years, learn that the fourth member of their friend group — Greta (Natasha O’Keeffe) — has died.

They visit Donegal together for the wake, but discover Greta’s death may not be as clean-cut as they thought. Worse, a horrible secret they buried together in their teen years is coming back.

Here are five reasons why How to Get to Heaven from Belfast should be your next Netflix binge, ranked!

5. How to Get to Heaven From Belfast offers more of the Derry Girls flavor

How to Get to Heaven from Belfast is the work of Lisa McGee, most well-known as the creator of the modern classic Irish sitcom Derry Girls. The shows share an Irish setting, writing style, and even some actors.

Derry Girls carries a careful tonal balance; it’s about teen girls growing up in Northern Ireland in the 1990s, at the end of the Troubles. It was a coming-of-age set against real historical tragedy, except it was a comedy series.

How to Get to Heaven from Belfast isn’t only a comedy, but the humor is in the same style as Derry Girls. Given the show’s respective timeframes, it’s also easy to picture this series as a peek at what the Derry girls are like in the modern day. That view is supported because the main cast of girl friends have similar personalities. 

Saoirse is Erin (Saoirse-Monica Jackson), the self-absorbed writer and leader of the group who is largely based on McGee herself;  Robyn is Michelle (Jamie Lee O’Donnell), a sharp-tongued, quick-to-anger party girl, and Dara is Clare (Nicola Coughlan), the skittish lesbian worrywart. 

4. How to Get to Heaven from Belfast is a perfect Yellowjackets pick me up

Though the Derry Girls comparisons are obvious, How to Get to Heaven from Belfast might strike you as Ireland’s Yellowjackets even more so.

Both shows are about middle-aged women reuniting to unravel a mystery centered around a terrible shared secret from their teen years. How to Get to Heaven from Belfast also employs intermittent flashbacks with younger actors double-cast as the teen leads, there’s a mysterious symbol at the center of the mystery, etc.

It’s especially similar to Yellowjackets Season 1, when the intrigue was still at its highest. If you want some of that, or are in need of a show to sate you before Yellowjackets Season 4, watch How to Get to Heaven from Belfast.

3. How to Get to Heaven from Belfast has a bouncy, quick-tongued Irish wit

How to Get to Heaven from Belfast is, again, not a straight-up comedy. It ventures into some dark places about trauma and murder, and the danger our heroines face has real-life or death stakes.

But you can sometimes forget that while watching it. The comedy is just as engaging and entertaining as the mystery. It’s the dialogue that has the most of Lisa McGee’s Derry Girls touch.

All three of the leads have quick wits but short fuses, and the actresses are plenty willing to be bufoonish. Saoirse, Robyn, and Dara do genuinely feel like old friends who are reconnecting after losing touch. The way they bounce off each other with wisecracks, or quirks like Dara’s Catholic guilt, is an essential reason why.

Sometimes the danger and broad comedy even intersect. On How to Get to Heaven from Belfast Season 1 Episode 4, “The Girl From Sagres,” the girls are saved from a boat explosion by a plastic banana boat Dara purchased 75% off.

2. Tana French fans will love How to Get to Heaven from Belfast

Any Ireland-set murder mystery, including How to Get to Heaven from Belfast, will have literary enthusiasts thinking of Tana French.

An acclaimed author, French is best known for her Dublin Murder Squad series, each following a different detective investigating a different case. The 2019 Dublin Murders awkwardly combined the first two books into one story, and hasn’t returned for another season.

If any French fans loved her latest book, The Keeper, and are looking for a TV series that scratches a similar itch, give How to Get to Heaven from Belfast a shot. Similar to French’s novels like In The Woods or The Faithful Place, the mystery in this series concerns a long-buried death resurfacing.

It’s not just the Irish setting that’s similar either. Like a French novel, which always eschews procedural cliches or outrageous twists in favor of characterization, the actual mystery isn’t as important as the characters in How to Get to Heaven from Belfast.

1. How to Get to Heaven from Belfast is a road trip comedy, murder mystery, and ghost story all in one

The marketing campaign for How to Get to Heaven from Belfast leaned on the buddy comedy side of the show. It made sense to appeal to the Derry Girls fans. But it’s impressive how the show doesn’t stick to one genre.

This isn’t a sign of a messy series, either, but one that’s got layers. For as often as the show will make you laugh, the title sequence — employing stop-motion cut-out figures running from a fire in the woods — sets a spooky and intriguing mood. The comedy then doesn’t disrupt the mood; it complements it.

The How to Get to Heaven from Belfast title sequence could fit a horror series, and the show is willing to even go there. Season 1 Episode 2 “The Secret” and Episode 3 “The Ghost” feature extended scenes of Saoirse haunted by a teen Greta.

The show even has a metatextual anger; Saoirse is a television writer showrunning a popular murder mystery procedural. Saoirse has gotten bored with writing the same thing, but Lisa McGee proves she’s got more than one Derry Girls-shaped trick in her hat.

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How to Get to Heaven from Belfast is streaming on Netflix.

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