FEEL LUCKY PUNK? (RIOT WOMEN)

 

RIOT WOMEN

Sometimes what sounds like a good idea just doesn't translate well on the screen.

That's the problem with BBC1's six part comedy drama 'Riot Women' - a 'Calendar Girls' style drama about a menopausal rock band in Yorkshire.

The series boasts a cast that you'd pretty much want for a show of its kind.

But surprisingly, 'Happy Valley' creator writer Sally Wainwright and her fellow director Amanda Brotchie are unable to deliver.

Joanna Scanlan plays Beth Thornton, a woman flirting with suicide but who has a good ear for music.

Approached by Lorraine Ashbourne's pub landlady Jess Burchill about forming a group to perform ABBA at a local talent contest, they persuade Tamsin Greig's retired cop Holly Gaskell and Amelia Bullmore's Yvonne Vaux to come on board 

The magic ingredient is found, however, when she stumbles across Rosalie Craig's troubled Kitty Eckersley performing karaoke in a bar who naturally becomes the lead singer.

Over the course of the drama, the women accidentally form a punk band with Beth on keyboards, Jess on drums, Holly on bass and Yvonne on lead guitar.

They graduate from half baked aspirations to perform ABBA to doing covers of Hole.

In typical Wainwright fashion, the drama charts the ups and downs in their lives, female friendship, ageing, the onset of dementia and workplace misogyny which Taj Atwal's Nisha Lal encounters in the police.

Wainwright nurtured the idea for the show for ten years, inspired by the riot grrrl movement in the US.

However despite all this, she has crafted a drama that consistently hits bum notes.

The characters don't feel genuine - more like cyphers for ideas and their musical journey doesn't convince.

Scanlan, Ashbourne, Greig, Craig, Bullijore, Johnston, Atwal and the rest of the cast certainly give their all.

But the script just doesn't fire up.

Even the theme tune misfires and feels like it's been ripped out of a CBBC drama.

 'The Commitments,' unfortunately, it ain't.

('Riot Women's was broadcast on BBC1 between October 12-November 16, 2025 with all episodes available on the iPlayer)