“Bridgerton” might be far and away Nicola Coughlan’s best-known show, but it doesn’t quite manage to top the list. That honor goes to “Derry Girls,” the dark comedy show about a group of teens growing up in Northern Ireland during the 1990s. Coughlan plays the level-headed Clare Devlin, one of the more likable characters on “Derry Girls.” With an emphatic 8.5 on IMDb, the series arguably serves as Coughlan’s most respected project.
“Derry Girls” combines mundane slice-of-life stuff with a far more grim and grander backdrop of the Troubles. In a 2019 interview with Channel 4, Coughlan summed up the show’s unassuming charms, while noting that she and fellow “Derry Girls” stars Saoirse-Monica Jackson and Jamie-Lee O’Donnell had personal experience on the way the series portrays the teenage experience.
“I think a lot of shows about teenage girls get it wrong, because they make it all about boys, and the girls all look super-glamorous,” she said. “I think Derry Girls is decidedly unglamorous. When I was at primary school, I went to an all-girls primary, as did Jamie-Lee and Saoirse. There’s not time to be wondering if you’re looking glamorous. And this is set in the 90s, it’s a generation pre-social media, there’s no Instagram, there’s no fancy make-up or whatever. It’s a very true reflection of what it’s like to be a teenage girl, and it’s joyous.”
