Riot Women

A revelatory series. .... Totally gripping. Raucous, insightful, and darkly witty, it’s a portrait of belated liberation sure to invigorate viewers at any stage of life.

No series has plumbed the heart and soul of middle-aged ladies quite like Riot Women, an ensemble dramedy from Happy Valley creator Sally Wainwright. Fierce, funny, and profound.

A lack of subtlety is no vice in punk rock, but it can wear in a six-episode drama season. Fortunately, Wainwright is too curious about her characters to sketch them in their simplest terms. By the end of its first season (a second one has already been ordered), the series has expanded beyond its putting-on-a-show premise to map out a rich network of the women’s family and social relationships.

“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.

Like all Wainwright’s best work (and work by the likes of Debbie Horsfield and Kay Mellor before her), Riot Women covers a lot of ground without getting bogged down or leaving the viewer feeling shortchanged.

Sally Wainwright’s Riot Women (BBC1) started with a dramatic punch to the face and kept up the raucously high energy of a pneumatic jackhammer until the end of the episode.

Wainwright is a skilled writer who knows how to weave plot strands together, but she’s so heavy-handed with the menopause stuff that before long I was cringing to my boots (and I am, as a woman of a certain age, this show’s target market).