In the early 1990s, a groundswell of young women raised on second-wave feminism but marginalized within the supposedly progressive realm of punk music rose up to make themselves heard, in a movement known as riot grrrl. Bands like Bikini Kill and Bratmobile aimed wrathful lyrics and gallows humor at a culture of misogyny that plagued their daily lives, from condescending male musicians to abusive fathers. Three decades later, those Gen X artists are in their 50s. And while sexism persists, older women feel it in different ways.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]
Riot Women, a revelatory series from the feminist-minded Happy Valley and Gentleman Jack creator Sally Wainwright that comes to the U.S. via BritBox on Jan. 14, casts an empathetic eye on these rarely acknowledged struggles: loneliness, invisibility, menopause and the stigma that surrounds it, caretaking fatigue. That might make it sound like a downer. In fact, this six-episode series about women of a certain age who form a punk band to compete in a local talent competition—and accidentally change their lives in the process—is totally gripping. Raucous, insightful, and darkly witty, it’s a portrait of belated liberation sure to invigorate viewers at any stage of life.
Another writer might have reduced the Riot Women to caricatures of small-town English naughtiness à la The Full Monty. But Wainwright never gives us the chance to perceive them as quaint, which would just be a form of objectification. When the series opens, Beth (Slow Horses’ Joanna Scanlan), a divorced teacher who feels abandoned by a married son in thrall to his snobby in-laws, is about to hang herself. Then the phone rings. “Do you wanna be in me rock band?” asks a pub owner pal, Jess (Lorraine Ashbourne). The all-female group they assemble includes Holly, a cop on the verge of retirement (Tamsin Greig); the younger colleague (Taj Atwal) she tries, perhaps naively, to defend against sexual harassment from a cruel male officer; and Holly’s midwife sister (Amelia Bullmore). Left to care for dementia-stricken parents and blamed by their kids for the sins of absent or philandering exes, their problems are real. Instead of covering ABBA, as they’d intended, they pour these experiences into original punk anthems.
The band finds its literal voice when Beth hears Kitty—an angry, near-feral lush fleeing a harrowing past, played with tenderness by theater star Rosalie Craig—belting out Hole’s lacerating “Violet” at a karaoke bar. Wainwright and the uniformly excellent cast bring depth to every female character. (The men can be a bit flat in their socially sanctioned self-centeredness, which might not be an accident.) Yet Riot Women truly, er, sings in its depiction of the friendship that develops between Kitty and Beth, two very different but inextricably connected individuals who might be uniquely qualified to save each other from the self-destructive urges they share.