Six-part series Riot Women, set and filmed in Hebden Bridge in West Yorkshire, launched on the BBC this week.
It is made by Drama Republic, a Mediawan Company, for the BBC and is a co-commission with BritBox.
Sally Wainwright is creator, writer, executive producer and series’ lead director
How would you describe Riot Women?
It’s a drama about women of a certain age who are at various stages of going through the menopause, but it’s not just about the menopause. For me personally, it’s things like elderly parents who start to need you more than you need them, marriages breaking down, adult children that still need some support, demands at work – so you’re being pulled in lots of different directions and in the middle of all of that you’re having the menopause and you’re feeling like you’re disappearing. I wanted to try and write about that but in a way that’s positive, uplifting, and about claiming your life back.
How did the idea for the series come about?
I had the idea for the series about 10 years ago. It was about finding a life-affirming way to talk about the menopause. I’ve always wanted to write about a rock band, so it was just putting those two things together.
How would you describe the tone of the show?
Uplifting, I hope! There’s a lot of humour in it and a lot of laughs. The dialogue is nice and buoyant and the actors certainly deliver that. It’s got a huge dark story all the way through that affects two of the central Riot Women. It’s kind of on a level of a Greek tragedy what happens to them, what befalls them, and what they discover about themselves and each other. It’s very powerful but very human, very joyous and celebratory too.
The series is set and filmed in West Yorkshire. What was it like to film there again, and why did you decide to set the series there?
It’s a story that could really be set anywhere to be honest, but I do like writing in my own vernacular because I think I can get more comedy out of the language if I’m writing in my own dialect and you can’t beat the landscape in Hebden Bridge. Riot Women is even more Hebden-centric than Happy Valley was, as we filmed a lot around there for this series. It just looks gorgeous on camera, and you get a great sense of place which I think is important in a TV show in order to feel like you really know where you are when you turn it on. It has a very particular atmosphere, and I think you achieve that by being in a specific part of the world.
The show features an incredible cast – what was it like working with them and seeing the band come to life?
They’re just joyous. They’re a joyous group of people to be with and I feel personally uplifted just by being around them. Rosalie can sing, she’s a brilliant singer. Joanna, Tamsin, Amelia and Lorraine couldn’t play their instruments before they started so they’ve been on a massive journey where they are now a band – they are really playing those instruments. Toby Higgins and Nick Pinchpeck have been their music teachers, and they’ve all really applied themselves.
It’s miraculous what they’ve done in quite a short space of time, it’s been around 6 to 7 months. I was really keen that they should be playing their own instruments, I hate it when you see people pretending or miming as I think it instantly takes you out of it. I think it also helped them to really own their characters.
The five band members are all very different. Can you tell us about each of them, as a way of introduction?
Joanna Scanlan is playing Beth who we meet in episode one and she’s in a really dark place. Everything is piling on top of her with lots of different demands from her son, her elderly mother and her work and within all that she feels she’s losing her identity. It’s a common experience with menopause that you lose sight of who you are, and at a time in life when you felt like you’ve got to know who you are, it suddenly all disappears. It slips through your fingers, and I’ve experienced that myself.
Beth’s friend, Jess (played by Lorraine Ashbourne), rings her up and says “do you want to be in a rock band?” – it’s just for a silly little talent contest that the local primary school are putting on. Beth latches onto this and takes it a bit too seriously and then gets upset when the others in the band think it’s just for fun. She walks out of their first meeting feeling disillusioned and completely by chance bumps into Kitty (played by Rosalie Craig). They’re like chalk and cheese; they couldn’t be any more different. It’s a complete fluke that they meet but they happen to get on really well.
We first meet Kitty when she’s in a very dark place and she’s trying to end it all. Kitty and Beth meet and they bring out the best in each other. They then find out they do have something much more profound and shocking in common, which is where the Greek tragedy element comes in. They go on a massive journey together which, as well as having this dark thread through it, it’s actually very creative. We joked on set that they’re the Lennon and McCartney of Riot Women. They have musical knowledge, and they spark each other off.
There’s Holly (played by Tamsin Greig) and we first meet her on the day she retires and she’s actually arresting Kitty for trashing a supermarket. Holly is very ‘can do’ and has a policy of always saying yes. Jess has a list of all the people she can ask to be in her silly little rock band and there’s a tick next to Holly’s name. What you see is what you get with Holly.
Yvonne is played by Amelia Bullmore – it’s the fourth time I’ve worked with Amelia and it’s brilliant. Yvonne is Holly’s big sister. She’s a nice foil to Holly and to the other women in the band, she just says it how it is and doesn’t try to flatter people or agree with anyone for the wrong reasons. Then Kitty shows up and she’s the only one that really stands up to her, equally with Yvonne to Kitty. They have a couple of nice head-to-head scenes, which was great to write.
What made you want to write a series like Riot Women?
I just want to entertain people primarily; it’s always been what I’ve wanted to do. I wanted to write about the menopause because I was going through it, it was interesting and something I hadn’t really thought about until it started to happen. My mum told me that she laughed her way through the menopause, and I thought I was going to do that too. Looking back though, I don’t think she did laugh her way through it, and I think she was having quite a tough time with it. People just didn’t talk about it then, but people are talking about the menopause a lot more now and we can actually have shows on telly that are about women going through the menopause. It’s out there more. I wanted to address how it can make you feel but also to present it in a way that is uplifting.
We have very set ideas about the menopause – we think it’s just hot flushes and being a bit bad tempered but there’s a lot more to it. Kitty, for example, is menopausal and she’s only in her early 40s. You can menopause at any age and for a lot of women HRT can help you at any age, it shouldn’t just be for two years when you’re absolutely at the end of your tether. We should have more knowledge about menopause and what HRT can do.
ARXX came on board to write the songs for the Riot Women band. How did you find them and what was it like working with them?
The songs are composed by ARXX, a band recommended by Amy Raphael, the rock journalist, who came on board early on to advise us. ARXX, made up of Hanni and Clara, are a Rock/Pop/Alternative band based in Brighton. We gave them some ideas for a song called Seeing Red and we asked a few people to look at it. ARXX came back with by far the best version of it. They put so much into it, and they really transformed it and turned it into their own. It’s so catchy and it’s just fabulous. They wrote the music and the lyrics, but we also offered them bits – for example, our police advisor, Lisa, came up with the first line ‘I’m so depressed, I can’t get dressed.’ So again, we all put little bits in, but ARXX really turned it into their own and brought their fabulous energy to it.
They wrote Seeing Red, a song called Riot Women which is performed in the final episode, another song called Sh*tting Pineapples which is about childbirth and Just Like Your Mother which Beth and Kitty write in the series, as it’s something Beth’s ex-husband always used to say to her. In the series, Kitty and Beth create the music and lyrics with input from the other members of the band.
You also learned to play some instruments when you were writing this show. How did that affect your creative process? Did it change how you approached different characters?
I’ve learnt to play the drums and the electric guitar for the show and for my own prep about how realistic it is that a group of women can learn to do this. It’s just joyous and so fabulous – I know the actors had so much fun playing together and they got a real buzz out of it as it’s very different to just acting together. It is life-enhancing and certainly made me appreciate rock bands and people that can play instruments, they make it look so easy but of course it isn’t!
I wanted Kitty to be the singer because we meet her doing karaoke in episode one and she was always meant to look like a rockstar and be a bit of a wildcard. Beth was always going to play the keyboard because she’s a teacher and you could imagine her having piano lessons growing up. Jess’ story is that her husband left his drumkit behind in the garage when he cleared off, so she’s adopted it. For Holly and Yvonne, the idea was that Yvonne had guitar lessons as a kid, so she picked up the lead and Holly plays the bass because she arrested someone, and he lent her his bass guitar.
I’m really proud of them, they’re all my little riot babies! It’s been a great crew and team. The Riot Women have really put their hearts and souls into it, and it’s been so uplifting to work with them. They’re all top-drawer people.
This interview was conducted by the BBC.
Pippa Considine
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