Don’t miss the witty Belfast romp How to Get to Heaven from Belfast, plus check out the reboot of ’80s classic The Burbs, a young Nathan Fillion in Firefly and The Bear’s Matty Matheson in his chaotic new cooking series.
How to Get to Heaven from Belfast ★★★½ (Netflix)
Comic thrillers are tough to pull off. Too many laughs and the risk isn’t plausible. Too serious and the gags start to feel out of place. For the most part, Derry Girls creator Lisa McGee strikes an entertaining balance in her attempt. The tale of three female best friends forced to revisit their teenage secret, How to Get to Heaven from Belfast has a dry wit, panicked energy, and a sturdy mystery. Everything is up for grabs, except the unbreakable bond between the trio.
Reunited by the news that the Belfast high school pal they’d lost touch with, Greta, has suddenly died, Saoirse (Roisin Gallagher), Robyn (Sinead Keenan), and Dara (Caoilfhionn Dunne), are soon trashing a rental car and each other as they head to a wake in rural Northern Ireland. Saoirse, a screenwriter, has been living in London, so she gets extra mockery. The macabre and the daft interweave, especially once they confirm that the body being buried is not Greta. It’s time to go full Jessica Fletcher.
McGee already has all the accolades for Netflix’s Derry Girls, with the 1990s-set teen sitcom’s DNA laced throughout How to Get to Heaven from Belfast. The protagonists may be 38 years old instead of 16, but the accents, remonstrative banter, and language are familiar – you get plenty of “grand”, “class” and “mammy”. As different as their paths have been – spitfire Robyn has too many children, eccentric Dara is still at home with her mother – the adult trio are tied together, especially because of “that night”.
The outline of McGee’s plot looks familiar, complete with high school flashbacks, including Greta, to “that night”, but McGee messes with it in fascinating ways. Early on, having checked in at the tiny town of Knockdara’s eccentric hotel, the trio discovers a 2000s retro club night. They down shots and the expected dance montage kicks off, but halfway through the outrageous moves slow and each woman warily watches as her younger self keeps dancing. The otherworldly regularly intrudes, often to good effect, and McGee isn’t afraid to smash genres together.
The downside to her well-earnt freedom is that eight episodes feels slightly drawn out, even as the supporting cast offers up a memorable mix of menace and eccentrics – “Rome’s encouraging us to examine our work-life balance,” a Catholic priest tells Dara when she misses confession and he won’t extend the hours. The three leads are terrific together, capturing the dynamic of friends who know each other too well. They have a debt to the past, but perhaps solving a mystery with your besties is also a welcome escape from the everyday. Either way, the show is class.
The Burbs ★★★ (Binge)
We’re now in the pay-attention-to-whatever-Keke-Palmer-stars-in era. The American actress, who was electric in Jordan Peele’s horror film Nope and pinballed outrageously through the buddy comedy One of the Days, gets a showcase series with this comic-thriller inspired by the 1989 Tom Hanks movie. Palmer hits punchlines with ease, but her real talent is to add an absurd, transporting energy to a story’s necessities. It really pays off here.
Created by Celeste Hughey (Dead to Me), the show positions Palmer as a fish-out-of-water protagonist. She’s a litigation lawyer who has moved to the suburbs for her maternity leave, fetching up in the picket fence suburb where husband, Rob (Jack Whitehall), grew up. Hip-hop and stroller walks give way to hanging with her idiosyncratic older neighbours and theorising about their street’s creepy house and its creepy new owner, Gary (Justin Kirk).
This is Only Murders in the Cul-De Sac, although Palmer and fellow amateur sleuths, including Dana (Paula Pell), don’t quite have the giddy banter Steve Martin and co share. The Burbs is aware of the racial dissonance of putting a young black woman amid curated lawns and Homeowner Association bylaws, and that friction adds to a mystery that nearly supports eight episodes. Palmer sails through it all, whether bold or bemused. She’s worth the follow.
Smiling Friends ★★★★ (HBO Max)
HBO Max now has all three seasons of this adult animated sitcom, which delivers 12-minute episodes brimming with ludicrous gags, absurdist violence and giddy ramifications. Creators Michael Cusack and Zach Hadel use a titular charity, which has an endowment dedicated to spreading happiness from an unlikely source, as a vehicle for the missteps of earnest employees and best friends Pim Pimling (Cusack) and Charles Dompler (Hadel). The pair, respectively tiny and pink versus bulbous and yellow, headline a show that remains my welcome antidote to Rick and Morty.
Just A Dash ★★★½ (Netflix)
Canadian chef, television personality and The Bear co-star Matty Matheson has moved his chaotic cooking series from YouTube to Netflix, but it remains true to the host’s philosophy: improvise in the kitchen, mock conventionality and enjoy food preparation as opposed to deifying it. Sent on the road by his wife, Trish, as a creative gambit, the 15-minute episodes mix meta-commentary and madcap cuisine – Claw and Order is a faux-police drama with Matheson preparing crab risotto in a police precinct house as cop cliches unfold. The show’s an acquired taste, but worth it.
Cross ★★½ (Amazon Prime Video)
The first season of this crime thriller, with Aldis Hodge as the dedicated Washington DC police detective and forensic psychologist Alex Cross, was a muscular, conventional course correction after Tyler Perry mauled the franchise in an ill-judged 2012 movie. The show leans into Amazon Prime Video’s action series framework, tempered with the racial implications of Cross being a black officer in a city where his community distrusts the police. Hodge remains a righteous leading man, but the set-up of the new season, with a billionaire being pursued by a merciless killer, is close to boilerplate.
Firefly ★★★½(Disney+)
If you’ve finished The Rookie on Netflix and want more of star Nathan Fillion’s leading man jaw and comic actor quips – a rare and welcome combination – go right back to this one-and-done series from 2002. Created by Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Joss Whedon, it’s a space western, set on the frontier of a 26th century galaxy, post-Civil War, where a former soldier, May Reynolds (Fillion) runs a spaceship as a no-questions-asked freelance operation. Authority is defied, but the show’s bedrock is the complicated relationship between Mal and his diverse crew. It really pays off.
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