Learning to play musical instruments for Sally Wainwright’s latest BBC drama was a “terrifying” experience for the actresses Tamsin Greig, Lorraine Ashbourne and Amelia Bullmore.
In Riot Women, the trio, who are all in their late fifties and early sixties, play a group of friends from Hebden Bridge in Yorkshire who form a makeshift punk-rock band.
Ashbourne, 64, whose credits include Sherwood and Bridgerton, admitted that she underestimated the scale of the challenge after being given five weeks to learn the drums.
Amelia Bullmore, Lorraine Ashbourne, Rosalie Craig, Joanna Scanlan and Tamsin Greig star in Riot Women
PA
“Everyone thinks they can play the drums and I went into it thinking, ‘Yeah, easy’, but it’s actually frustrating and really difficult. And now I’ve got huge respect for drummers — all musicians — but drummers especially since doing it,” Ashbourne said in a Bafta masterclass.
“I can’t pretend that I’m now a drummer. I can do three songs. It was terrifying and not a natural instrument for me by any means.”
She added that it was particularly daunting because Wainwright, the creator of Happy Valley, is herself an accomplished drummer.
Greig, 59, whose credits include Friday Night Dinner and Episodes, added that her nephew advised her against delaying guitar lessons until the new year after she got the part in November.
Tamsin Greig and Amelia Bullmore were tasked with learning the bass and guitar
BBC
“He told me I needed to start right away,” Greig said, adding that preparations for the show included “very good, structured, brilliant lessons with show teachers … an exercise regime and someone we had to play in front of every week. It was absolutely terrifying and thrilling all at the same time.”
Fortunately, she said, her character had been written by Wainwright as being “a bit shit at it”.
“That was very helpful for me,” she said. “I leant very heavily into my shitness.”
Wainwright, 62, said she had been “slightly worried” that audiences may be surprised by the show, which got two million viewers when it launched on Sunday and had been billed as a comedy drama.
She said that it actually has parallels with Happy Valley, the BBC drama that ran for three series from 2014 starring Sarah Lancashire played a police officer pursuing a criminal played by James Norton.
Sarah Lancashire and Charlie Murphy in Happy Valley, Sally Wainwright’s gritty crime drama
BBC
“Riot Women is not unlike Happy Valley in terms of its depth and the human trauma and emotion that one of the characters had to go through,” she said. “So while there’s a lot of humour, it also has a much darker theme running through it.”
Wainwright added that she has faced questions about Riot Women that she did not believe would have been asked had it not been about a group of women “of a certain age”.
“It’s interesting the number of times that I’ve been asked who this show is for and if it is for menopausal women,” she said. “But if this was a show about men with guns rescuing women then nobody would be asking that question.”
The Times television critic Carol Midgely called Wainwright’s latest effort “raucously high-energy”, adding: “It’s hard to think of anyone better to write about unapologetic, wall-kicking, midlife female rage.”
Riot Women is on BBC1 at 9pm on Sundays. All episodes are also available on the BBC iPlayer.