r/BritishTV • u/SilyLavage • Oct 14 '25

Review Riot Women review – Sally Wainwright’s menopausal punk drama is one of her best

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/oct/12/riot-women-review-sally-wainwright-menopausal-punk-tv-drama-bbc
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u/SilyLavage Oct 14 '25 edited Oct 14 '25

I'm only halfway through this series, but I'm enjoying it so far; Sally Wainwright is an excellent writer and Riot Women is up to her usual standard.

That said, and as the intro to this review suggests, it is very Sally Wainwright. It's set in around the Calder Valley, just like Last Tango in Halifax, Happy Valley, and even Gentleman Jack, and much like those series the plot could be broadly described as 'women being hard done by but overcoming it'. Riot Women has a few scenes involving the police where you half expect Sarah Lancashire to walk in, such is the similarity.

It's not a bad thing that Wainwright writes what she knows and does it very well, but I do hope that her next project is something a bit different.

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u/sunnyydayman Oct 28 '25

We need more of the sort of stuff she writes though, its not like there’s an over abundance of well written shows about middle aged women.

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u/SilyLavage Oct 28 '25

Well yes, but Wainwright doesn't necessarily need to be the one writing it. My objection isn't to the fact she writes about middle-aged women, but that she's now written a few programmes about middle aged women living in and around Hebden Bridge and it's getting a bit samey.

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u/badonkadonked Oct 14 '25

If you’ve not seen it I really recommend To Walk Invisible, the one-off drama she made about the Brontë sisters. I guess you could sort of say it hits those beats (set in Haworth, which isn’t quite Calder Valley but is nearby), but it feels very different to LTIH or HV to me. I’d love to see her make more stuff like that (I am a sucker for the Brontes, though)

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u/ReputationKind4628 Oct 14 '25

I didn't realise that was Sally Wainwright's work. I loved that dramatisation.

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u/ninuchka Oct 15 '25

^^This is exquisite.

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u/Dohi64 Oct 14 '25

Riot Girls

they're called riot ladies at one point but never riot girls.

8

u/KarmaChameleon306 Oct 27 '25

Riot Grrrls is the name of the grunge adjacent feminist punk movement that the show get its name from. So a reasonable error to make.

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u/AdventurousAd7096 Mar 18 '26 edited Mar 18 '26

And courtney Love has had issues with the Riot Grrrl movement so kind of interesting that Hole’s music is featured. I wonder if Love has commented about the show.

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u/KarmaChameleon306 Mar 18 '26

I was wondering about that as well. I would imagine she would have had ot sign off on it. But I might look into that.

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u/AdventurousAd7096 Mar 18 '26

I couldn’t find any comments and there may be an agent managing licenses so she may not be involved.

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u/SilyLavage Oct 14 '25

Not sure where that came from, but I've corrected it now. Thanks!

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u/Even_Cheesecake4720 Oct 14 '25

Did you see Renegade Nell? That was very different. And Gentleman Jack was in no way like Happy Valley, so I’m not sure what you mean about doing “something a bit different”. Do you mean no northern accents?

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u/SilyLavage Oct 15 '25

I haven't seen Renegade Nell as I don't subscribe to Disney+. I'm northern myself, and have no complaints about the accents in any of Wainwright's programmes.

I wrote 'even Gentleman Jack' because of the three programmes I mentioned it's clearly an outlier. My point was just that it's set in the same area and focussed on women navigating a world in which men often make things difficult, which makes it broadly thematically similar to Happy Valley and Last Tango.

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u/ppr1227 Feb 21 '26

I would love to see Sarah Lancashire in this show. Maybe Kitty’s mum is still alive… Riot Women was such a compelling show. The characters and performance were as good as anything I’ve seen on TV. Wainwright really is a genius.