A new comedy series about a teenage girl growing up during the Troubles in Northern Ireland in the 1990s has been announced by Channel 4.
Derry Girls will be set in the run-up to the 1994 ceasefire and will be based on the experiences of Derry native Lisa McGee, who created the RTÉ drama Raw and Channel 4 sitcom London Irish.
The six-part sitcom will follow 16-year-old Erin and her friends in 1994 and will show armed police in armoured Land Rovers, British Army checkpoints, and "peace" walls while detailing the daily ups and downs of her life, including romantic and family dramas, conflicts at school and body insecurities.
McGee, who grew up in Derry at that time, said: "Anything set during the Troubles tends to be a bit grim and bleak, but that just wasn't my experience of Derry as a child and a teenager, it was a joyful place.
The Peace Bridge in Derry
"I'd like to celebrate that. It was also hugely matriarchal, so I was keen we have a large and varied cast of female characters."
The writer, who also worked on the Bafta-nominated TV drama Being Human, the Golden Globe nominated series The White Queen for BBC 1, and Indian Summers for Channel 4, added: "There were other things going on in Northern Ireland at that time, there were other stories, I'm excited to have the opportunity to tell some of them."
Earlier this year, Channel 4 said it had scrapped plans to proceed with Hungry, a sitcom written Dublin-based writer by Hugh Travers about The Great Famine after a public outcry.
Derry Girls was announced by Channel 4 at the Edinburgh TV Festival on Wednesday. Nerys Evans, deputy head of comedy at the channel, said: "Derry Girls may have a unique setting but it's a really warm family sitcom, seen through the eyes of teenager Erin. Lisa's writing is truthful, brave and laugh-out loud funny."
Channel 4 has also announced The Bisexual, a new comedy about a bisexual New Yorker navigating the London dating scene and looks at the difference between dating men and women from the perspective of someone who does both.
Desiree Akhavan
Created by Girls actress Desiree Akhavan, who will also star, the series will follow New Yorker Leila as she adjusts to the dating scene in London after breaking up with her girlfriend.
Leila will swap her luxurious life as part of a power couple for a house-share with a British male flatmate who becomes an unlikely wing man who helps her navigate her new life dating men.
Akhavan said: "Getting to play in the sandbox with such intelligent collaborators at Sister Pictures and Channel 4 is an absolute dream come true. They're the perfect partners in crime for a taboo sex comedy. And by that I mean they're all perverts."
