Roisin Gallagher

Gallagher’s Saoirse can be blunt with her friends without making their affection doubtful. In How to Get to Heaven from Belfast (2026), she belongs so comfortably alongside Sinéad Keenan’s Robyn and Caoilfhionn Dunne’s Dara that we believe in a long friendship before the series begins asking questions about its past. We warmed to them because their ease together makes even their mutual exasperation feel familiar. Gallagher helps establish what matters early: these women would still choose each other.

Her move into television leads came after years of theatre and short films. Shiv Sheridan in The Dry (2022) was her first major television lead, followed by Janet opposite Johnny Flynn in The Lovers (2023). These parts put her humour and vulnerability at the centre of a programme, a sensible use of an actor whose characters need room to be difficult.

She has an expressive face and a useful willingness to look foolish; an eye-roll can do the work of a complaint. Her ability to move between quiet, naturalistic acting and broader physical comedy is part of her appeal, though the quieter skill is the one we value most in the Belfast series. Lisa McGee’s Northern Irish humour asks the actors to be direct, but not to sound as though they despise one another. Keenan and Dunne are equally good at this. Gallagher deserves credit for her share of that ease, rather than praise that pretends she achieved it alone.

That is also where we would put a limit on the praise. How to Get to Heaven from Belfast lets its plotting wander, and some of the silliness feels required rather than funny; Gallagher cannot make every contrivance convincing. What she and her co-stars can do is give us a reason to stay when belief in the story weakens. We would be glad to see her given more writing that trusts her to hold our attention through the way she deals with other people. Start with Saoirse for the company, and allow the mystery a little slack.