Everyone’s allowed to be a little Irish on St. Patrick’s Day but if you want to really immerse yourself in the culture of the Emerald Isle before the beloved holiday, these Ireland-set series should surely do the trick.
Ireland may be a small country, but it definitely packs the pop-culture punch, especially where good television is concerned: our watch list spans genres from coming-of-age teen comedies like “Derry Girls” to chilling psychological thrillers like “The Fall” and acclaimed historical dramas like this year’s “Say Nothing.”
If you want your St. Paddy’s Day celebrations to be less about green beer and more about great TV, these seven top-notch shows set in Ireland and Northern Ireland will get you in the mood for March 17.
And if you want even more authentic stories from the Irish isle, check out these Irish movies on the best streaming services like Max, Prime Video and Apple TV.) Sláinte!
‘Normal People’
Based on Sally Rooney’s best-selling novel, the emotionally charged Hulu romance “Normal People” had audiences positively swooning for Paul Mescal —who earned an Emmy nod for his acclaimed performance — and Daisy Edgar-Jones in their breakout roles as popular jock Connell Waldron and bookish outcast Marianne Sheridan.
The drama chronicles the characters’ intense connection as they first meet at secondary school in County Sligo in rural Ireland, to their undergraduate years at Dublin’s Trinity College.
On Rotten Tomatoes, the series has a 91% rating, with the site’s critic consensus reading: “Anchored by Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal’s vulnerable performances, ‘Normal People’ is at once intimate and illuminating, beautifully translating the nuances of its source material.”
Watch on Hulu
‘Bad Sisters’
The Apple TV Plus series “Bad Sisters” doesn’t just feature a delightfully dark mix of black comedy and mystery elements — it also boasts a seriously impressive 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes for its debut season, as well as a Peabody Award, and BAFTA and IFTA wins for best drama series.
The titular sisters are the five Garvey girls: Eva (Sharon Horgan, who also co-developed the Irish comedy series alongside Dave Finkel and Brett Baer), Grace (Anne-Marie Duff), Ursula (Eva Birthistle), Bibi (Sarah Greene) and Becka (Eve Hewson).
After Grace’s abusive husband JP (Claes Bang) dies of mysterious causes, the sisters find themselves at the center of an intense investigation, with a determined insurance agent (Daryl McCormack) trying to prove the women were maliciously involved in JP’s death.
Watch on Apple TV Plus
‘Derry Girls’
An instant classic, “Derry Girls” charmed audiences with its culturally specific yet universally relatable tales of Erin (Saoirse-Monica Jackson), Orla (Louisa Harland), Clare (a pre-“Bridgerton” Nicola Coughlan), Michelle (Jamie-Lee O’Donnell) and their unfortunately English friend James (Dylan Llewellyn), a plucky pack of 16-year-olds living in mid-1990s Londonderry during the last gasp of the Troubles.
The series was created and written by Lisa McGee and inspired by McGee’s own experience growing up in Derry during the Northern Ireland conflict.
Against that harrowing historical background, the three-season sitcom finds plenty of humor and joy as it follows our core quintet through teen dances, awkward kisses, Take That concerts and run-ins with Sister George Michael (Siobhán McSweeney), their hilariously acid-tongued headmistress at Our Lady Immaculate College.
Watch on Netflix
‘Love/Hate’
Consider it the Celtic answer to “The Wire” — across five seasons, the gritty IFTA-winning drama “Love/Hate” lured viewers into the depths of Dublin’s criminal underworld, following gang leader John Boy Power (played by Aidan Gillen, of “Game of Thrones” and “Peaky Blinders” fame) and his equally delinquent friends Nidge (Tom Vaughan-Lawlor), Darren (Robert Sheehan) and Tommy (Killian Scott).
When Darren’s brother and former gangmate, Robbie (Chris Newman), is shot immediately upon his release from Cloverhill Prison, the assassination sets off catastrophic events that spark tension between rival gangs and has lasting —and deadly — impact on the larger community.
Watch on Amazon Prime Video
‘The Fall’
Before he was making hearts flutter as “Fifty Shades of Grey” hunk Christian Grey, Holywood-born Irish actor Jamie Dornan got pulses racing for an entirely different reason for his BAFTA-nominated turn as serial killer Paul Spector in “The Fall,” the Northern Irish detective drama that ran on BBC Two in the UK and RTÉ One in the Republic of Ireland for three seasons.
Created and written by Allan Cubitt, the police procedural paired Dornan with Gillian Anderson as Detective Superintendent Stella Gibson, the investigator drafted from the London Metropolitan Police to catch Spector before he can continue his spree of murdering young professional women in the city of Belfast.
Watch on Netflix
‘Say Nothing’
This FX-slash-Hulu limited series packs a lot of action into its nine episodes: The haunting historical drama created by Joshua Zetumer spans four decades in the lives of Belfastians during the turbulent Troubles.
Adapted from Patrick Radden Keefe’s best-selling 2018 book of the same name, “Say Nothing” kicks off in the early 1970s with the abduction and murder of single mother Jean McConville, who had been falsely accused by the Irish Republican Army of passing information to British forces.
Alongside that shocking event, the miniseries shows the armed conflict through the eyes of other real-life figures of the IRA, including sisters Dolours and Marian Price (played by Lola Petticrew and Hazel Doupe, respectively), future Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams (Josh Finan), and IRA commanding officer Brendan Hughes (Anthony Boyle).
Watch on Hulu
‘Moone Boy’
Created, co-written and co-starring Boyle native Chris O’Dowd (“Bridesmaids,” “The IT Crowd”), “Moone Boy” is a semiautobiographical sitcom focused on a 12-year-old boy growing up in western Ireland’s County Roscommon in the late 1980s and early ’90s.
Opposite youngster David Rawle as Martin Moone, O’Dowd plays the boy’s sarcastic, banjo-playing imaginary friend Seah, helping Martin navigate all of the highs and lows of adolescence. (Deirdre O’Kane, Peter McDonald, Aoife Duffin, Clare Monnelly and Sarah White round out the ensemble as the chaotic Moone family.)
Hilarious and heartwarming, the comedy series aired for three seasons on British broadcaster Sky One between 2012 and 2015 and earned O’Dowd Irish Film and Television Award nominations for acting, writing and directing.
►Watch on Peacock
More From Tom’s Guide
