'I hope it's a worthy successor to Happy Valley': Sally Wainwright on menopause and new show Riot Women

Sally Wainwright’s new BBC One series Riot Women is so much more than a making-the-band drama. It is that as well. Riot Women tells the story of a group of women forming a band for a daft laugh before finding unexpected connection through the music they create. But this series also has serious depth.

It is an excoriating howl of defiance written by Wainwright for and on behalf of women in their middle years. These are women carrying so much that they are in danger of losing sight of themselves. 

As they find a creative outlet for their collective sense of fury, Riot Women is funny, provocative and as good as anything Wainwright has written. She began conjuring the story a decade ago. 

“It was when I was going through the menopause. It just changes the way your brain works,” she says. “I got to this point where you’ve seen lots of life’s slings and arrows and you feel older and wiser and sadder, and that nothing’s surprising or extraordinary any more. And I started thinking the best of life had already been had and wanted to write about what I was going through.

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“I wanted to write about the menopause in a way that wasn’t an energy drain. A big step was going on HRT, which made a massive difference to me and made me realise life is still worth living, it’s not all downhill.”

This is a life stage that should be seen in primetime drama more often. There is so much going on. There are so many themes for dramatists and actors to bring to bear.

The women who will become the band Riot Women are, between them, dealing with aging, ill or dying parents; relationship breakdowns; grown-up children who communicate so unkindly (if at all); the end of working life; feeling invisible, unlovable and unimportant.

Put these emotions in the hands of an actor like Joanna Scanlan and it’s electric. Her performance as Beth, a quietly unhappy woman who roars back to life with a little help from her friends is the beating heart of Riot Women. Add in a delicious coincidence worthy of Dickens and the stage is set.

Beth meets Kitty at exactly the moment she needs someone. Kitty, after decades of unprocessed trauma, topped up by damage inflicted by bad men, finds release performing the Hole song “Violet” – Courtney Love’s fierce anthem – in pub karaoke. Hearing Kitty sing, Beth finds the strength to speak out. 

“Beth is kind of me. She’s our guide into this world,” says Wainwright, who learnt drums while creating the series. “I was never quite suicidal like Beth but I understand where she was at, where nobody is helping you with all these things you’ve got to deal with. I was invested a lot in Beth and in her story.

“Beth is the only person who, instead of hitting her or being hit by her, says to Kitty, ‘You’re really clever, you’re really interesting’. Beth and Kitty are so unlikely together. It’s kind of a romantic fantasy about how your life can improve through doing something positive and creative.”

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What starts as a one-night plan to play Abba’s “Waterloo” for a good cause becomes a mission, a sanctuary, an outlet for a whole heap of hidden pain. Armed with three chords and the truth, the band write about their lives and struggles.

“Menopause is about anger,” Wainwright says. “So it lends itself to punk, to rebellion, to sticking two fingers up. I felt like it is appropriate for menopausal women to be in that zone.”

The songs were written by Brighton duo ARXX, who began “as a punk band in the DIY scene”, with lyrics, ideas and titles suggested by Wainwright. 

“I hope more people start a band with their friends. It’s so undervalued, that feeling of playing an instrument or just hitting the drums really hard,” says ARXX singer-guitarist Hanni. “There’s no better feeling.”

So it was that anthems Just Like Your Mother, Seeing Red, Shitting Pineapples (a no-holds-barred account of childbirth) and the title track were created for Kitty (Rosalie Craig, singer-guitarist), Beth (Scanlan, keyboard), Holly (Tamsin Greig, bass), Jess (Lorraine Ashbourne, drums) and Yvonne (Amelia Bullmore, guitar), plus backing singers Nisha, Kam and Miranda (Taj Atwal, Chandeep Uppal and Macy Seelochan). 

The band’s on-screen journey was mirrored in the rehearsal period. 

“I got an email and the subject was Confidential: Sally Wainwright Project. I threw my phone across the room because I was so excited,” says Greig, who plays retiring police officer and perpetually disappointed internet dater Holly. “It said don’t read on if you don’t want to commit to learning an instrument. 

“It was indescribably thrilling when we got in a room together – I was so overawed that we were doing it and it sounded OK. Sally is allowing women to be loud and take up a space that’s unexpected. Being in a band was miraculous. It was unbelievably wonderful.”

For Wainwright, Riot Women marks another win in the battle for representation. But have a think: what are the other series where the lead actors, writer and director are all women over 40? Nope, me neither.

“There aren’t any and it’s getting worse. It has gone backwards,” says Wainwright.

“There was a glimmer of hope that things were more equal. But there’s still so many more male writers, many more male directors and a lot more men getting work acting. Women of a certain age don’t get lucky, apart from a very few names that we know.

“People sometimes claim it’s a female narrative when they’ve written a show about a man and turned it into a woman. That’s not writing about women. I hope people see the difference.”

Wainwright, who should know, reckons Riot Women echoes her very best work. 

“I hope it’s a worthy successor to Happy Valley,” she says. “There are a lot of parallels. People are billing it as a comedy drama, but it’s got a very dark story running through it. “Kitty is like Catherine Cawood [Sarah Lancashire’s Happy Valley character] in so many ways – she’s funny but has deep, dark stuff in the soul. It’s more colourful than Happy Valley, a different tone, but I hope it’ll feel like it’s from the same computer!”

Riot Women airs on BBC One on Sunday nights.

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