{"id":74761,"date":"2025-10-13T01:42:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-13T01:42:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/74761\/"},"modified":"2025-10-13T01:42:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-13T01:42:08","slug":"tamsin-greig-on-the-secret-sentimental-meaning-behind-new-bbc-drama-riot-women","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/74761\/","title":{"rendered":"Tamsin Greig on the \u201csecret\u201d sentimental meaning behind new BBC drama Riot Women"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019ve just finished watching the first episode of the BBC\u2019s new Sally Wainwright drama, Riot Women, or you\u2019ve binged the entire thing on iPlayer, you\u2019re probably feeling as uplifted as we are right now. If you haven\u2019t, let us tell you that it\u2019s gloriously good viewing. And, according to one of its stars, Tamsin Greig<\/a>, there\u2019s a secret sentimental meaning behind it that makes it all the more special.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re not familiar with the show yet, it tells the story of five women \u2013 played by Tamsin Greig, Lorraine Ashbourne, Joanna Scanlan, Rosalie Craig and Amelia Bullmore – in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, who are each going through the menopause. So, what do they do? Enter a local talent contest as a newly formed punk-rock band, of course. <\/p>\n

\"riot<\/p>\n

BBC<\/p>\n

It’s a series that puts midlife women in the spotlight, covering everything from HRT to invisibility and wild sex – and in an exclusive interview with Good Housekeeping, Tamsin revealed that there\u2019s a special connection to creator Sally Wainwright\u2019s mother, who sadly passed away in late 2023, having suffered from dementia. <\/p>\n

What to read next<\/p>\n

\u201cI think Riot Women is a sort of love song to Sally\u2019s late mother, as it\u2019s the first project her mother hasn\u2019t been around to read,” she shared. “My mum, who was from Leeds, would have said that Sally and her mother were as thick as thieves, until she moved into dementia and then she lost her.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tamsin shared the significance of the drama and the decisions Sally has made in the creation of it. \u201cYou generally can\u2019t put more than one woman of a certain age in a show,\u201d she explained. \u201cYou can perhaps have one person with dementia. You certainly can\u2019t have five leads who are women of a certain age, going through a similar experience, and two mothers with dementia\u2026 but Sally does. And here we are \u2013 what are you going to do?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"riot<\/p>\n

Helen Williams<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also, as viewers will discover, a subplot in Riot Women about corrupt cops, which is somewhat reminiscent of Sally\u2019s earlier drama Happy Valley<\/a>. The cops in question think they can get away with anything, particularly when it comes to their female colleagues. Discussing whether she felt the ghost of \u201cOur Catherine\u201d from Happy Valley, Tamsin revealed that she\u2019s as much of a fan of Sarah Lancashire<\/a>, who played Catherine, as the rest of us. <\/p>\n

\u201cMy parents loved Coronation Street, and I remember watching Sarah Lancashire and thinking, \u2018Wow, she\u2019s got a kind of inner spark that\u2019s really unusual and surprising,\u2019\u201d she said. \u201cLike everyone else, I couldn\u2019t take my eyes off her in Happy Valley.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"Band<\/p>\n

Helen Williams<\/p>\n

Whether you tune into Riot Women for the Happy Valley subplot, or simp;y to see what all the fuss is about, it\u2019s safe to say that you can expect a thoroughly empowering drama that\u2019s about so much more than a menopausal punk band. And while it\u2019s series we\u2019ve had to wait far too long for \u2013 it\u2019s well worth the wait. <\/p>\n

All six episodes of Riot Women are available to watch now on BBC iPlayer. <\/p>\n

READ MORE TV NEWS HERE<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you\u2019ve just finished watching the first episode of the BBC\u2019s new Sally Wainwright drama, Riot Women, or…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74762,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[156,58537,111,139,69,58534,58536,58535,437],"class_list":{"0":"post-74761","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-happy-valley","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz","13":"tag-riot-women","14":"tag-sally-wainwright","15":"tag-tamsin-greig","16":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74761"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74761\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}