A private Channel 4 would not make this show, says Derry Girls actress

According to one of the show’s stars, if Channel 4 were to be privatised, shows like Derry Girls “would never get made.”

The administration declared last week that the television channel would be privatised.

Nadine Dorries, the culture secretary, claims that government ownership is “holding Channel 4 back,” but others argue that the quality of the station’s programming would suffer as a result.

The news was “devastating” for Saoirse-Monica Jackson of Derry Girls.

A change of ownership, according to the culture minister, will provide Channel 4 with “the resources and freedom to develop and prosper as a public service broadcaster long into the future.”

Saoirse-Monica was speaking ahead of the third and final season of Derry Girls, which premieres this week on Channel 4.

Derry Girls is a Channel 4 television series that follows four teenage girls – and “a little English fella” – as they grow up in Derry, Northern Ireland, in the 1990s.

It follows the group as they go through the ups and downs of adolescence in the shadow of The Troubles’ last years.

Between the 1960s and 1990s, Northern Ireland was engulfed in a conflict that lasted over 30 years and claimed the lives of over 3,500 people.

Derry Girls has been a huge hit for Channel 4, including awards from the Royal Television Society, the Irish Film and Television Awards, and BAFTA nominations.

One of the reasons it’s been so well received, according to Saoirse-Monica, is that people in Northern Ireland have the ability to look at politics and serious topics through a comic lens.

Saoirse-Monica hopes the show will get “that big climax that we were hoping for” in the new season.

Even though this is the show’s final season, Erin, Michelle, Orla, Clare, and James will receive their GCSE results in the new season, Saoirse-Monica says, “Weirdly, it doesn’t feel like it’s the end.”

“Derry Girls takes up all of my time; I’m from here, and I enjoy the part; I don’t think there will ever be another job like this,” she continued.