Sally Wainwright, the creator and writer of “Happy Valley” (policewoman story), “Gentleman Jack” (historical lesbian drama), “Last Tango in Halifax” (septuagenarian romance) and last year’s “Renegade Nell” (period action fantasy) has created and written a new series,”Riot Women,” about some friends, new friends and not-quite friends — most “on the wrong side of 50” — who come together to form a band to play at a talent show. What begins as a lark turns serious and opens the door to a drama-infused comedy — or perhaps a comedy-flecked drama — whose busy first season resolves much but, in its final moments, opens the door to an already scheduled second.
Set in a West Yorkshire city that functions narratively as a small town, it folds some of Wainwright’s themes into a kitchen-sink feminist musical soap opera on the themes of friendship, family, maternity, misogyny and age. As a story of unlikely people coming together in an unlikely project, it recalls such films as “The Commitments,” “The Full Monty” and “Calendar Girls,” though it might also be seen as a middle-aged version of “We Are Lady Parts,” minus the South Asian specificity. It’s aspirational, as all such stories must be to make them worth telling, but tense; one worries things might go seriously wrong, even as the implied promise of the series is that they might not.
This is true from the opening scene, in which Beth (Joanna Scanlan), whose husband left her a year before; whose married son, Tom (Jonny Green) ignores her calls and texts; and who, feeling invisible in the world, sets out to hang herself. She’s interrupted twice by phone calls. The first is from her brother, angry that Beth sold their mother’s house to pay for her round-the-clock care; he wants his future inheritance. The second is from Jess (Lorraine Ashbourne), who runs a pub. She’s been fooling around on the drums and has had the idea to form a rock band to play at a local talent show, “for a laugh.” She wants Beth, who can play the piano, to join — suicide at least temporarily averted. (The rope — blue, so you can spot it — will stick around.)
Beth visits a music store to buy a digital keyboard. “I’m in a rock band,” she tells the clerk. “Punk-ish, mainly … We sing songs about being middle-aged and menopausal and more or less invisible. And you thought the Clash were angry.”
“You don’t normally get keys and synths in punk bands,” says the clerk, but, considering, comes up with Devo, Atari Teenage Riot and, surprisingly, L.A.’s own the Screamers. And though this is possibly the result of Wainwright googling “punk bands with synthesizers,” the thought that this obscure yet seminal band from ‘70s Hollywood resides in the consciousness of a music store clerk in 2025 West Yorkshire is rather delicious.
Meanwhile, Kitty (Rosalie Craig), a drunk woman in a leopard-print coat is going mad in a supermarket, grabbing kitchen knives and boxes of pain relievers and guzzling vodka from bottles snatched off the shelf, while Garbage’s “Only Happy When It Rains” blasts on the soundtrack. This brings to the scene police officer Holly (Tamsin Greig), whose last day of work it is, and her partner, Nisha (Taj Atwal).
Holly: “Put the knife down.”
Kitty: “I haven’t got a knife.”
Holly: “You’ve got a knife. In your hand … The other hand.”
Holly, it will transpire, has already committed to playing bass in Jess’s band, bringing along her uptight sister, Yvonne (Amelia Bullmore), a midwife, to play guitar — neither has any experience — and Nisha, who also brings a friend, to sing. After an argument over whether they should perform a cover of ABBA’s “Waterloo” or, as Beth hopes, something original to express themselves, she (feeling unheard once more) leaves, only to encounter, of all people, Kitty, released from custody, karaoke-singing Hole’s “Violet” in a bar, expressing the sort of rage Beth wants to express. (Craig, a powerhouse, and comparatively young at 44, is a musical theater star.) Exhilarated and inspired, she bonds with Kitty, who will remember none of it when she wakes up the next morning at Beth’s, including the song they wrote together on the drive home. (“Just Like Your Mother,” based on an accusation by Beth’s husband — one of three originals provided by the Brighton punk duo, Arxx.) Kitty has a lot of baggage, including the area’s most famous criminal for a father, but Beth, who enlists her for the band, will help her unload it.
There will be bumps along the way, steps forward and back, because … that’s the story. Their grown, but not exactly adult, children will doubt them — “Traditionally, there is talent involved,” says Jess’ daughter Chloe (Shannon Lavelle), of her mother’s talent show plan. They will doubt themselves. With a couple of exceptions, the men they know or meet do not come off well, tending to be selfish, childish, weak, dishonest, dismissive, greedy or violent. (Reacting to the news on television, Jess catalogs the woes of the world: “Bombs, rocket attacks, refugees, poverty, inequality, exploitation, hunger, anger, shooting, torture, hatred, abuse, misery — and do you know what’s behind it? … Men. Every time it’s men.”) They complicate the drama, yet are somewhat beside the point.
The band, which will be called the Riot Women, is the spine to which the stories are attached without particularly being the story itself. (All the characters have separate challenges.) But much as it’s exciting to watch the group come together, and exhilarating in the good old-fashioned let’s-put-on-a-show way to see them succeed onstage, it’s a pleasure just to watch the actors at work. Often the women are shown close-up, in long conversations; it gives you time to take them in and makes the series feel intimate. “Riot Women” is real; not so much in its narrative, with its backstage musical tropes, pointed points and a coincidence that would make Dickens think twice, but in its character details, and in the contracting and expanding space between the players — the tales within the tale.
Rock on.
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