Caoilfhionn Dunne

Dara sounds like someone her friends might find exhausting and still choose to spend the evening with. In How to Get to Heaven from Belfast (2026), Caoilfhionn Dunne shares an ease with Roisin Gallagher and Sinéad Keenan that makes years of friendship credible. We warmed to the three of them because their bluntness never made the affection doubtful. That matters when the mystery starts asking us to believe rather less plausible things.

Comedy is a welcome change from the emotionally charged supporting parts that have occupied much of her screen career. Love/Hate (2012–14), as Lizzie, brought her wider notice on Irish television, while her stage work has included plays by Conor McPherson. More prominent television parts followed, including Anne Glover in A Thousand Blows (2025) and Dara for McGee. Dunne has put it plainly: “I don’t really get to do a lot of comedy, I’ve spent a lot of my career crying at strangers for money.”

We also know her as Jackie Walsh in Industry (2020). We found the performances more dependable than the programme’s taste for sex and excess, particularly when those distracted from the office politics. That is an ensemble judgement, rather than a claim that Dunne alone accounts for the series’ appeal. There is a practical connection to Dara, too: she had already used a Belfast accent for Jackie. We would still put more weight on how she works with Gallagher’s Saoirse and Keenan’s Robyn than on the accent.

The reservation is with the writing around her. McGee’s plotting wanders, and some of the silliness feels imposed; the actors cannot make every contrivance convincing. We would like to see Dunne offered more comedy that gives her this much room to establish a friendship, without requiring quite so much tolerance of the plot. Start with How to Get to Heaven from Belfast, and give the mystery a little more patience than it always deserves.