A Certain Slant of Light

Under the circumstances it seems not quite right to say “Happy St. Patrick’s Day!”, but despite everything we are observing it in a small way. We will be having potato cakes and Guinness stew, as is my St. Patrick’s Day tradition (also traditional: I didn’t salt it enough the first go round, so I added a bit more salt to the remaining stew after dinner last night, so it should be perfect tonight), and perhaps also lime curd, which may not be particularly Irish but does at any rate come out of my Irish cookbook. And it’s green! So there.

We’re also watching Derry Girls, which of course I’ve seen, but Julie hadn’t and of course I had to spread the love. “What’s it about?” she asked.

“It’s a comedy about ordinary people just trying to live their lives during an ongoing crisis,” I said.

She looked at me wearily. “Well, that’s on point.”

(She has a work-from-home laptop now, so we’ll both be at home for the next few weeks. This is a weight off my mind.)

We watched the first two episodes yesterday, and we are in agreement that Sister Michael is the very very best, although honestly I love all the characters so much that it pains me slightly to display even this little bit of favoritism. Julie has not yet warmed to Michelle (to be fair, Michelle is probably the roughest around the edges. And quite mean to her cousin James, I feel bad for him) but perhaps that will come over time.

I watched Derry Girls partly because it was six half-hour episodes long and I am easily swayed by the lure of short shows - but also because I was intrigued by its premise. A high school comedy set in Northern Ireland in the 1980s, during the Troubles? That’s certainly sounded different.

And different it is, and often a delight. The show focuses on ordinary people, not fighters, whose main reaction to the war is irritation when the main bridge is closed for a bomb threat yet again, which will double the time in their commute.

This persistent ordinariness is one of the show’s most deliciously comic aspects: there’s a great sequence where Erin’s proverbially boring uncle manages to bore his audience with a story in which the IRA steals his van and ties him to his radiator. But it’s also slyly subversive of war story cliches - even anti-war story cliches - in that it relentlessly undercuts the importance of the war. It’s not grand or heroic, or even brutal and tragic (I think filmmakers - storytellers of all kinds - underestimate the attractive power of tragedy); it’s annoying and absurd.

Absurd and irritating - and inescapable. The Troubles are only occasionally part of the main plot of the episode, but they are persistently present background radiation in the characters’ lives - in the heavily armed guards whom the girls walk past on the way to school, in their hope of getting free chips from the local chippie after their boring uncle is featured on the news (no luck; the girls accidentally ruin their chances by setting the shop owner’s curtains on fire), in wannabe writer Erin’s hifalutin musings in her journal about how she’s a ~child of the conflict - “You didn’t have to memorize it!” Erin howls at her cousin Orla, who has been reciting these musings as a cap to the first episode. They are, after all, the appropriate cliches to end the first episode of a show set in a war zone.

But there are also moments of real pathos, like the last moments of the season finale. The last episode in general is excellent, in fact: I think it really expanded the show’s emotional range and offered lots of interesting possibilities for future seasons.

If there’s one complaint I’d make, it’s that before that final episode, the show starts to feel like - not quite a one-trick pony, but nonetheless a pony with a limited repertoire of tricks, some of which begin to wear out their welcome even by the end of this very short season. Erin’s grandfather relentlessly undermines her father, whom he has never liked. In the first episode it’s funny. By episode five, it’s getting predictable - and tiresome.

In general, the characters are a little meaner - more unkind and petty - than I usually like from a TV show. So far they’ve stayed on the right side of sympathetic - or maybe not sympathetic but interesting? And with enough good in them that there’s clearly possibility for growth - but that’s very much a matter of personal taste; I suspect they’ll put some people right off.

( Spoilers )

Also, Sister Michael, the girls’ headmistress who has no fucks left to give, is a joy and a delight.