Introducing Derry Girls: The Four Girls You Definitely Knew At Secondary School

Remember the television? No, not Netflix. Actual television as previously provided on a big shiny box in your living room. There’s good stuff over there at the moment, you know? Namely Channel 4s new comedy offering Derry Girls, and I promise it’s worth sitting down to watch at the actual time of broadcast(but also, if you’ve missed loads you can go catch up on 4OD for free too).

Allow me to take you back to your teenage years. You were 16 years old and struggling to balance secretly wanting to ace your GCSEs with also allocating an adequate amount of time to super important things like sneaking out to house parties, playing it cool while at the same time desperately crying out for the attention of your crush and navigating a hormonally charged relationship with your out of touch mother.

Those were the days. This is the point in life we’re introduced to Erin and her mates who are living in Derry, Northern Ireland during The Troubles of the 1990s. It's nostalgia overload - it features the soundtrack of dreams with tracks from the likes of East 17, Madonna and The Cranberries, and takes us back to a digitally simpler time when house phones were the norm not the exception.

Have a watch of the Derry Girls Trailer

Erin and her pals go to an single sex Catholic school and between the four girls (and one unfortunate English guy, but we’ll get to that in a minute) they effectively make up the key personalities you probably encountered in secondary school. Let us introduce you.

Erin Quinn (played by Saoire-Monica Jackson)

We’ve all been an Erin. She wants to be part of a world that exceeds her life in little old boring Derry, is hopelessly in love with a guy who’s a bit older, in a band and has hair that falls in a purposeful mess across his forehead. Erin isn’t ‘cool’, but she secretly wants to be. Erin us all of us. We love Erin.

Clare Devlin (played by Nicola Coughlan)

Our heart swells for Clare. She’s the sensible one of the group. And when we say sensible we mean relatively level headed about everything that doesn’t jeopardise how well she’s doing at school She’s the brains, you see, and she cares about all the things quite a lot. Clare loses her shit a bit around exam season (stay away from energy drinks, kids) and is prone to accidently snitching on her BFFs. Not cool, no, but you can’t help but forgive her desperation.

Orla McCool (played by Louisa Harland)

Orla is to Derry Girls what Phoebe is to Friends. In the first few episodes of Friends Phoebe wasn’t given nearly enough credit or screen time for how clearly brilliant (and funny) she was. The same goes for Erin’s cousin Orla. She and her mum live next door to Erin and her parents and she kind of does her own thing. She’s on a different wave to everyone else but you’d be surprised by how often she’s the one to be making sense while the others have all lost their heads.

Michelle Mallon (played by Jaime Lee O’Donnell)

Now Michelle is the rebellious ‘give a fuck’ type of friend we all had who was secretly really nice on the inside but wouldn’t dare let anyone else know it. She’s the first to answer back, first have sex, first to get hold of alcohol, first to steal a notice board from the local chippy all in the name of, well, why not?

James Maguire (played by Dylan Llewellyn)

Poor English games is Michele’s cousin. He's shipped over to Derry to live with her and somehow ends up being enrolled in their all-girl school. The girls don't think he's hot and can't get their heads around the possibility that anyone would find him attractive, quickly making him the male mate you used to hang around with who you were unexplainably protective of. Well, until you both leave school, cross paths again at uni only to realise that it was *him *you were in love with the whole time, not the dickhead, leather jacket-wearing guy in the band.

READ MORE: 25 TV Shows You’ll Remember If You’re A True 90s Kid

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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.