This preoccupation eventually led to a degree in English and drama at Queen’s University, Belfast, where McGee discovered the work of playwright Brian Friel, from Donegal, Ireland. “It was the first time I realized you can write about where you’re from and write the way you speak and it can still be very profound,” she said. “Reading his plays, it was the first time I thought our world was interesting as well.” She also sparked to Arthur Miller, with his fast American dialogue: “I just love the rhythms of that, and it has a lot in common with the way Irish people speak.”
After starting a theater company that put on plays above pubs, she got an agent in London and landed work writing for television, including “Being Human,” about a group of 20-something monsters. She created a sitcom, “London Irish,” for Channel 4, that was “love it or loathe it” but gave her the confidence that there would be interest in a show about Northern Ireland.
McGee, 37, who writes the entirety of “Derry Girls,” said it came easily to her: “I think I had a lot of material in the back catalog from my school days.” The hardest part was replicating the contradictory sense of community in a place such as Derry, “where everyone knows your business. We grew up in this really scary, violent time, yet no one locked their doors. It doesn’t make any sense.”
The series is filmed in Belfast and Derry, which can create some humorous misunderstandings. During production of the first season, McGee’s father heard some co-workers saying the British Army had returned. “And he said, ‘No, that’s my daughter’s TV show,’ ” she said.