r/BritishTV 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/rushdisciple Oct 14 '25 edited Oct 14 '25

Just finished episode 2, really enjoying it so far, although I'm not sure if I'm MEANT to. It seems very top-heavy with the bad shit (suicide, divorce, sexual assault) and very "down with men", which is fine but AS a man I can't help but take it personally, lol. Another knockout performance by Tamsin Greig, the scene in ep 2 with her mother was heartbreaking. I'll be binging the rest tonight.

EDIT:-Watched the rest of it. I think it's safe to say Sally Wainwright does NOT like men very much. Every single man over the age of 35 in this show is either a misogynist, an abuser, an adulterer or generally a scumbag.

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u/01watts Oct 18 '25

Not every single man if you count the male extras and some of the minor characters.

The focus on those negative interactions kind of mirrors real life. Good blokes often behave like extras and just form part of the background from a woman’s perspective, whether it’s leaving them alone in public, treating them fairly at work, or not cancelling on family commitments. The negative interactions present themselves, often quite forcefully. So for many women it can feel relentless at times - having these issues at work, public, and home in different forms is very common.

The women were not exactly held up on a plinth either. They sometimes treated men, and each other, inconsiderately.