“People laughed at the TV jobs in Belfast!” How Northern Ireland’s capital became home to quality drama | television

‘I Love them! Minutes after I boarded a taxi at Belfast International Airport, the driver was beaming with Derry Girls. Many of the tourists he takes want to talk about the hit comedy, and as a fan himself, he’s happy to oblige.

We’re stuck in traffic, which is strange for this small town on a rainy Tuesday morning. “That’s because all the media is here,” he jokes. But there is some truth to that. I’m visiting to attend the world premiere of How to Get to Heaven from Belfast, the new series from Derry Girls mastermind Lisa McGee, and to see how the capital has become home to the best TV.

It’s a big week: In addition to the McGee event, Michael Flatley is in court seeking an injunction to ensure the 30th anniversary showing of Lord of the Dance can go ahead. There’s also a lot of buzz around another award-winning local show. “Blue Lights has just started filming on the road!” Says Melanie Harrison, the owner of my Hotel Harrison, who, like most of the people I met on this trip, is a true storyteller. Michael Smiley, who stars in the beloved police drama, regularly stays at the hotel, but is now filming a movie with Brad Pitt in Ireland. “If Brad needs room for the night, I’ll be happy to have him,” she laughs. He’ll be in great company – Zadie Smith has stayed on recently, as has Siobhan McSweeney And Bronagh Gallagher. Adrian Dunbar was also heard singing in the pub during the early hours of the morning.

Harrison knows all about the area’s art scene. It features live operas, poetry readings and art exhibitions in the hotel rooms, which are themed with icons associated with the city, from C.S. Lewis to Angela Lansbury (“Her mother lived around the corner!”). She’s witnessed the rise of local TV firsthand, with local lad Jamie Dornan filming The Fall on her doorstep more than a decade ago – and she even became a part of it. Oscar winner Christoph Waltz filmed the opening scene of his film Old Guy in one of her hotel rooms, and a dead body was found in one of the suite bathrooms in the Channel 5 drama Murder Most Puzzling. Blue Lights even asked to film a club scene in the back bar, but the guests were booked. “People would laugh at the idea of ​​TV jobs in Belfast a few years ago,” says Harrison.

This is not the case now. McGee’s BAFTA-winning comedy series put Derry on the global cultural map, but parts of it were filmed in Belfast and surrounding areas, helping the capital become the heart of Northern Ireland’s television renaissance. In the past few years it has boasted: Channel 4’s Love Through Troubles drama Trespasses; Sky’s Spiky romcom The Lovers; BBC adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Conversations with Friends; ITV medical thriller malpractice; and the HBO epic Game of Thrones prequel A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. Line of Duty will also be produced here again when it returns after a hiatus. The wonderful Say Nothing, about Provisional IRA volunteer Dolores Price, was partly made in Belfast but mostly in Liverpool.

I took a cultural bus tour of the city. A stop at the Seamus Heaney Center proves the quality of the city’s local TV storytellers: McGee, Blue Lights creators Declan Lawn and Adam Patterson, and Trespasses writer Louise Kennedy are all colleagues. Joining the tour is Katherine Grimes, the music supervisor who has worked with all three names. She left rural Northern Ireland at the height of the Troubles in the 1980s and worked on shows such as Absolutely Fabulous and The Royle Family in London. After the lockdown, Grimes was offered Blue Lights and moved to Belfast. She is now responsible for the needle drops on How to Get to Heaven from Belfast, describing McGee as “an all-round great person” who is also “a very passionate and knowledgeable music fan”. The work keeps coming.

“I’ve always been connected to the storytelling in songs and literature of Northern Ireland,” she later told me. “But to now be immersed daily in a renewed, vibrant and exciting community that has global stories to tell, influenced by its unique history, is truly a full-circle moment. I literally laugh every day. The people of Northern Ireland have a quick wit and an unassailable sense of humour, despite our devastating past.”

This TV boom has been a long time coming.

During the Troubles, many screen stories focusing on the conflict were staged and censored. Take today’s play: Carson Country in 1972, which was produced in London and explored the roots of the Troubles. Media expert Professor John Hill reported in 2020 that “its broadcast was delayed for several months on the basis that it would be seen as politically biased and might inflame the situation in Northern Ireland.” In another play from the same series two years later, The Dandelion Hour, staff reluctance and security risks led to the production being postponed again to London. However, as the scene slowly developed, television plays produced in Belfast helped to show working-class life there: in the 1980s, millions across the UK watched Graham Reid’s “Billy Trilogy”, which launched the career of a young Kenneth Branagh.

Around the time of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, the government-backed Northern Ireland Screen Agency was established to attract international film and television producers. More nuanced accounts of Northern Ireland were beginning to emerge, along with more risqué humor – but sitcoms like the satirical series Give My Head Peace, which ran for more than 30 years, never took off outside the country. “People weren’t interested,” Grimes recalls. “And people didn’t really understand the language.” She says Derry Girls has had a big role in changing that – even if some fans still need to watch it with subtitles.

It was Game of Thrones that took Belfast to new television heights. Since 2010, the Emmy Award-winning fantasy film has been filmed largely at the newly renovated Titanic Studios shipyard and nearby Linen Mill Studios in Banbridge, with its proximity to the coast and countryside making it cheap and easy to film Westeros’ diverse landscape on location. As I stopped by the city’s pubs on a food tour, my guide Barry said that the Harp and the Duke of York’s ensemble was once packed with stars like Kit Harington and Emilia Clarke. But he says they were treated no differently than the next person enjoying a Guinness or a ukulele: “Belfast people don’t let people go past their station, no matter who they are.”

Night falls and the city’s independent cinema, the Queen’s Film Theatre, opens its doors to show How to Get to Heaven from Belfast. McGee arrives dressed in a tartan power suit and introduces the first episode with James Nesbitt in the audience. It’s very different from Derry Girls: a “mystery and comedy with horror elements” about three women in their late 30s – Dara, Saoirse, Robyn – who go on a road trip to find their dead friend. True to its title, the show is filmed and set in and around Belfast, with the history of the area naturally involved.

Now based in Belfast via Derry and London, McGee has loved showcasing her city to an international Netflix audience, and locals will recognize attractions like the yellow Harland and Wolff cranes, the Lyric Theatre, the Grand Central Hotel and the Limelight nightclub. “I went to college in Queens, so I spent a few nights in the ’70s at Limelight,” she says with a smile. “But every place has its own [version of] Limelight, do you know what I mean? These details are what make the story universal.

For Belfast-born Róisín Gallagher, who plays Saoirse, it was the dialogue and fast-paced speech that made How to Get to Heaven from Belfast feel true to life: “I knew it. I got it. To read something you recognize because it’s in your DNA, it’s in your bones. There’s an integrity in letting you talk at the pace that Saoirse speaks. Not to simplify it for a wider audience, but just be true to the nature of where you’re from.”

A 40-minute drive from Belfast the next morning, I checked into the Harborview Hotel in Carnlough, on the wet and wild Antrim coast. This whiskey hotel, renamed the Knockdara in the script, is the starting point for the show’s road trip, where friends are staying before the funeral (curiously, there’s a wake happening when I arrive). The hotel has since been renovated, but I immediately recognized the reception desk where hotel manager Ardal O’Hanlon appeared, with a flashing bow. The hotel’s co-owner, Adrian McLaughlin, embraces the Netflix effect: “We’ll have a screening party and watch it on the big screen!” There’s actually a themed cocktail menu with a menu called Wake, infused with Irish whisky.

This is not the first time a TV show has brought visitors to this attractive port. Two minutes from the hotel are the steps emerging from the sea that Arya climbed after being stabbed by the Waif in Game of Thrones. One of the jewelers who provided the items for display is down the road, a couple told us over dinner later, and the woman was flashing her ring. Screen tourism has significantly boosted Northern Ireland’s economy: Blue Lights and Hope Street have created more than 280 jobs, with the BBC investing £112 million in the country in 2023/34; Game of Thrones pumped £251m into the region. Endless studio and bus tours follow, and fans love to embark on their own adventures on set.

The Glenarm Castle estate, located just a short drive from Harbourview, is probably ready for some on-screen tourism, too. While George the Butler was hosting a tour of the residence, I asked him if A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms – a second series of which is due to air in 2027 – had been filmed here. He points out the window at the open grounds and says a group had been set up there for a few months, constantly shrouded in a mysterious mist: “It looked like a medieval village.” The employees had no idea what was going on but tried to guess the story from the mysteries they spotted.

There are plenty of the best TV cooking shows in Belfast, from season three of Jamie McGovern’s BAFTA-winning Time to psychological thriller Close to Me and the long-awaited return of Line of Duty. Bill Murray has also been spotted filming a golf drama, and Blue Lights, now in its fourth season, is certainly here to stay – although Grimes is keeping mum about the return of popular brass (and last seen dead in season one) Jerry.

“I think we’re special,” she says of her industry. “We support each other – we now have the opportunity to shine on screen. People love working here. It’s a friendly place and the locals are sincere in their desire for everyone who visits to have a good experience and a laugh.

“We have been deprived of visitors for many years, so now we want to show the world all the good things.”