Ten years ago, when she was in her early 50s, the TV showrunner Sally Wainwright started experiencing brain fog and feeling low.
She was busy juggling three shows, as well as two teenage sons and a mother declining with dementia, but Wainwright felt like she “was disappearing,” she said recently.
It was awhile before Wainwright discovered that she was going through menopause, and that the symptoms she was experiencing are as common as the hot flashes often played for laughs in TV shows and movies.
Wainwright started thinking about writing a show that would challenge this common “misunderstanding of what menopause is” — without being “miserable,” she said.
A decade later, the result is “Riot Women,” a raucous six-episode series that follows a group of menopausal women in the north of England who form a punk band. The show comes to BritBox in the United States on Jan. 14, after a well-received run on the BBC late last year.
It’s “the most autobiographical thing I’ve ever written,” said Wainwright, who also directed half the episodes. “I suppose it was my own kind of therapy, writing the show,” she added.
Your Questions About Menopause, Answered
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What are perimenopause and menopause? Perimenopause is the final years of a woman’s reproductive years that leads up to menopause, the end of a woman’s menstrual cycle. Menopause begins one year after a woman’s final menstrual period.
What are the symptoms of menopause? The symptoms of menopause can begin during perimenopause and continue for years. Among the most common are hot flashes, depression, genital and urinary symptoms, brain fog and other neurological symptoms, and skin and hair issues. Here’s a head-to-toe guide to the midlife transition.
How can I find some relief from these symptoms? A low-dose birth control pill can control bleeding issues and ease night sweats during perimenopause. Avoiding alcohol and caffeine can reduce hot flashes, while cognitive behavioral therapy and meditation can make them more tolerable. Menopausal hormone therapy and the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor paroxetine can also ease some symptoms.
What is Veozah? Veozah is the firstnonhormonal medication to treat hot flashes in menopausal women; it was recently approved by the F.D.A. The drug targets a neuron in the brain that becomes unbalanced as estrogen levels fall. It might be particularly helpful for women over 60 because, at that age, starting hormonal treatments can be considered risky.
How long does perimenopause last? Perimenopause usually begins in a woman’s 40s and can last for four to eight years. The average age of menopause is 51, but for some it starts a few years before or later. The symptoms can last for a decade or more, and at least one symptom — vaginal dryness — may never get better.
What can I do about vaginal dryness? There are several things to try to help mitigate the discomfort: lubricants, to apply just before sexual intercourse; moisturizers, used about three times a week; and/or estrogen, which can plump the vaginal wall lining. Unfortunately, most women will not get 100% relief from these treatments.
What is primary ovarian insufficiency? The condition refers to when their ovaries stop functioning before the age of 40; it can affect women in their teens and 20s. In some cases the ovaries may intermittently “wake up” and ovulate, meaning that some women with primary ovarian insufficiency may still get pregnant.
Fact, or fiction? We asked gynecologists, endocrinologists, urologists and other experts about the biggest menopause misconceptions they had encountered. Here’s what they want patients to know.
Wainwright is one of the most important TV writers working in Britain today, with acclaimed hits under her belt including the devastating crime drama “Happy Valley” and the historical lesbian HBO drama “Gentleman Jack.”
Viewers familiar with these projects will recognize several aspects of “Riot Women”: the beautiful rolling hillsides of West Yorkshire, where Wainwright grew up; the violent run-ins with the police; and the strong female characters who care deeply about their local community.
The central “riot woman” is Beth, a lonely English teacher. Her husband has moved out, her adult son would rather spend time with his in-laws, and her mother needs 24-hour dementia care. “I just sometimes feel that they’ve all had the best of me for years,” Beth says in the first episode. “Now that I’ve got nothing left to give, I’m dispensable.”
When we meet Beth, this mix is all making her feel deeply sad. But after Jess (Lorraine Ashbourne), who runs a local pub, asks her to help form a rock band for a talent show, Beth realizes that she’s also feeling deeply angry.
Together with three other local women — a police officer, a midwife and a troubled tearaway — they don eyeliner and sequins to become the Riot Women. “We sing songs about being middle-aged, and menopausal, and more or less invisible,” Beth tells a music store employee. “And you thought the Clash were angry.”
Joanna Scanlan, who plays Beth, said the music in the show was almost a “MacGuffin for something that is much deeper and more profound, about the complexities of aging, of being a woman and of family life.”
Equally, “there is no doubt that participation in creative activity, together with others, is extremely good for us,” Scanlan said. “It makes us feel connected and expressed.”
This was also true for the actresses playing the band members, who had to learn to play their instruments. At the beginning of the shoot, after months of lessons, they had two weeks of rehearsals just for the music. (Scanlan said they called these sessions “‘band practice,’ in honor of ‘American Pie.’”)
Tamsin Greig, who plays Holly, a police officer turned bass player, compared the “guttural” joy of the group’s successfully playing a full song together — and well — to getting married and having children. “I didn’t think that I could ever feel this way again,” she said.
For many years, Greig — who has starred in beloved British shows like “Episodes” and “Friday Night Dinner” — had longed to work with Wainwright, while also thinking “It will never, never happen,” she recalled.
Greig said that when she finally met Wainwright and her team, they asked if she would be game for three things: learning to play bass, “doing a peculiar sex scene” and perfecting a West Yorkshire accent. The accent scared her the most, Greig said — but she managed all three (including the sex scene, which involves a surprise request from a date she had met online).
Collaborating with Wainwright — especially on a show with a rare focus on what Greig called “the mid-squeeze of life” — was “a little bit of magic,” the actress said.
Across its six episodes, “Riot Women” follows the band members’ interwoven and gritty personal lives alongside their preparations for the talent show. Because “making the band” story lines often show up in reality TV, it can be “hard to do it interestingly” in scripted shows, Scanlan said.
But she said she had loved the “Riot Women” script as soon as she read it. Wainwright writes in a “very particular way, so that the stage directions can be like paragraphs, but written as if it was fiction,” Scanlan said. This makes for a “very compelling, almost thriller-style read,” she added, which also translates to pacey onscreen action.
Wainwright called the show “a ripping yarn” for “anyone who likes being told a story.” That last point was worth making, she added, given the number of times she was asked before show’s premiere whether its only viewers would be middle-aged women.
But “Riot Women” got strong ratings for the BBC and has already been renewed for a second season. The delight the characters and actors find in creativity also seems to have translated offscreen.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been on a show where there has been such intense, instantaneous joy,” Greig said. “Not just from us, but from people watching it.”
The post Think Punk Rockers Are Angry? Meet These Menopausal Women. appeared first on New York Times.
