'Riot Women' has a rockin' time with middle-aged, menopausal women

Sally Wainwright, the creator and writer of “Happy Valley” (policewoman story), “Gentleman Jack” (historical lesbian drama), “Last Tango successful Halifax” (septuagenarian romance) and past year’s “Renegade Nell” (period enactment fantasy) has created and written a caller series,”Riot Women,” astir immoderate friends, caller friends and not-quite friends — astir “on the incorrect broadside of 50” — who travel unneurotic to signifier a set to play astatine a endowment show. What begins arsenic a lark turns superior and opens the doorway to a drama-infused drama — oregon possibly a comedy-flecked play — whose engaged archetypal play resolves overmuch but, successful its last moments, opens the doorway to an already scheduled second.

Set successful a West Yorkshire metropolis that functions narratively arsenic a tiny town, it folds immoderate of Wainwright’s themes into a kitchen-sink feminist philharmonic soap opera connected the themes of friendship, family, maternity, misogyny and age. As a communicative of improbable radical coming unneurotic successful an improbable project, it recalls specified films arsenic “The Commitments,” “The Full Monty” and “Calendar Girls,” though it mightiness besides beryllium seen arsenic a middle-aged mentation of “We Are Lady Parts,” minus the South Asian specificity. It’s aspirational, arsenic each specified stories indispensable beryllium to marque them worthy telling, but tense; 1 worries things mightiness spell earnestly wrong, adjacent arsenic the implied committedness of the bid is that they mightiness not.

This is existent from the opening scene, successful which Beth (Joanna Scanlan), whose hubby near her a twelvemonth before; whose joined son, Tom (Jonny Green) ignores her calls and texts; and who, feeling invisible successful the world, sets retired to bent herself. She’s interrupted doubly by telephone calls. The archetypal is from her brother, aggravated that Beth sold their mother’s location to wage for her round-the-clock care; helium wants his aboriginal inheritance. The 2nd is from Jess (Lorraine Ashbourne), who runs a pub. She’s been fooling astir connected the drums and has had the thought to signifier a stone set to play astatine a section endowment show, “for a laugh.” She wants Beth, who tin play the piano, to articulation — termination astatine slightest temporarily averted. (The enactment — blue, truthful you tin spot it — volition instrumentality around.)

Beth visits a euphony store to bargain a integer keyboard. “I’m successful a stone band,” she tells the clerk. “Punk-ish, chiefly … We sing songs astir being middle-aged and menopausal and much oregon little invisible. And you thought the Clash were angry.”

“You don’t usually get keys and synths successful punk bands,” says the clerk, but, considering, comes up with Devo, Atari Teenage Riot and, surprisingly, L.A.’s ain the Screamers. And though this is perchance the effect of Wainwright googling “punk bands with synthesizers,” the thought that this obscure yet seminal set from ‘70s Hollywood resides successful the consciousness of a euphony store clerk successful 2025 West Yorkshire is alternatively delicious.

Meanwhile, Kitty (Rosalie Craig), a drunk pistillate successful a leopard-print overgarment is going huffy successful a supermarket, grabbing room knives and boxes of symptom relievers and guzzling vodka from bottles snatched disconnected the shelf, portion Garbage’s “Only Happy When It Rains” blasts connected the soundtrack. This brings to the country constabulary serviceman Holly (Tamsin Greig), whose past time of enactment it is, and her partner, Nisha (Taj Atwal).

Holly: “Put the weapon down.”

Kitty: “I haven’t got a knife.”

Holly: “You’ve got a knife. In your manus … The different hand.”

Kitty (Rosalie Craig), left, and Beth (Joanna Scanlan) link aft a drunken karaoke session.

(Helen Williams/Britbox)

Holly, it volition transpire, has already committed to playing bass successful Jess’s band, bringing on her uptight sister, Yvonne (Amelia Bullmore), a midwife, to play guitar — neither has immoderate acquisition — and Nisha, who besides brings a friend, to sing. After an statement implicit whether they should execute a screen of ABBA’s “Waterloo” or, arsenic Beth hopes, thing archetypal to explicit themselves, she (feeling unheard erstwhile more) leaves, lone to encounter, of each people, Kitty, released from custody, karaoke-singing Hole’s “Violet” successful a bar, expressing the benignant of rage Beth wants to express. (Craig, a powerhouse, and comparatively young astatine 44, is simply a philharmonic theatre star.) Exhilarated and inspired, she bonds with Kitty, who volition retrieve nary of it erstwhile she wakes up the adjacent greeting astatine Beth’s, including the opus they wrote unneurotic connected the thrust home. (“Just Like Your Mother,” based connected an accusation by Beth’s hubby — 1 of 3 originals provided by the Brighton punk duo, Arxx.) Kitty has a batch of baggage, including the area’s astir celebrated transgression for a father, but Beth, who enlists her for the band, volition assistance her unload it.

There volition beryllium bumps on the way, steps guardant and back, due to the fact that … that’s the story. Their grown, but not precisely adult, children volition uncertainty them — “Traditionally, determination is endowment involved,” says Jess’ girl Chloe (Shannon Lavelle), of her mother’s endowment amusement plan. They volition uncertainty themselves. With a mates of exceptions, the men they cognize oregon conscionable bash not travel disconnected well, tending to beryllium selfish, childish, weak, dishonest, dismissive, greedy oregon violent. (Reacting to the quality connected television, Jess catalogs the woes of the world: “Bombs, rocket attacks, refugees, poverty, inequality, exploitation, hunger, anger, shooting, torture, hatred, abuse, misery — and bash you cognize what’s down it? … Men. Every clip it’s men.”) They complicate the drama, yet are somewhat beside the point.

The band, which volition beryllium called the Riot Women, is the spine to which the stories are attached without peculiarly being the communicative itself. (All the characters person abstracted challenges.) But overmuch arsenic it’s breathtaking to ticker the radical travel together, and exhilarating successful the bully old-fashioned let’s-put-on-a-show mode to spot them win onstage, it’s a pleasance conscionable to ticker the actors astatine work. Often the women are shown close-up, successful agelong conversations; it gives you clip to instrumentality them successful and makes the bid consciousness intimate. “Riot Women” is real; not truthful overmuch successful its narrative, with its backstage philharmonic tropes, pointed points and a coincidence that would marque Dickens deliberation twice, but successful its quality details, and successful the contracting and expanding abstraction betwixt the players — the tales wrong the tale.

Rock on.