George Kane

In How to Get to Heaven from Belfast (2026), the dancing is a welcome break from chasing the mystery. We relaxed during those scenes, because the performers could make the programme enjoyable without another elaborate predicament. Kane shares directing duties with Michael Lennox and Rachna Suri, so it would be rash to claim every successful scene for him. Still, the ease of those passages fits a career built around ensemble comedy and physical performance.

The early sketch work and first feature, the mockumentary Discoverdale (2012), help explain that preference for a comic sequence with room to develop on its own. Regular work with Big Talk followed in the mid-2010s, including Crashing (2016) and Timewasters (2017–19). Episodic and road-trip structures recur in his work, allowing sketch-like scenes within longer stories. That approach makes sense for a director who collaborates with actors on physical business and improvisation within scripted comedy: a scene need not depend entirely on the next line.

The return to features with Apocalypse Clown (2023) brings dark, physical and surreal comedy to the foreground. Kane also co-wrote it; his feature-writing partners are Demian Fox, Shane O’Brien and James Walmsley. Those credits make the features worth exploring alongside the television work.

That taste for unruly comedy needs some restraint, as Lisa McGee’s How to Get to Heaven from Belfast demonstrates. The three friends convince us, and the programme’s willingness to let them lose their dignity is a substantial pleasure. Moving between a rural Irish chase and scenes built around friendship gives the directors plenty to manage, but the plotting wanders and some of the silliness feels forced. It is good company, and we would not want tidiness at the expense of those performers. Start there, with some patience for the mystery and rather more interest in the friends.