I’m not sure Appointment TV still exists in the choose-your-own adventure world of modern entertainment but, for me, a new Sally Wainwright show is as close as it gets. Readers of this website will likely be most familiar with Wainwright’s work from Gentleman Jack, her much-beloved hagiography of fast-walking lesbian diarist Anne Lister. Her other award-winning shows, such as cosy comedy-drama Last Tango in Halifax and the gritty crime drama Happy Valley, have lifted her into a small elite of big-name British showrunners.

As a writer, director and producer, Wainwright always foregrounds women’s experiences, with broad strokes of sharp, Yorkshire wit and a palette that runs from warmth to steely grit, light family hijinks to the darkest basements of humanity.

This focus on women, frequently in large casts, means there’s always a high chance of queer women in any show introduced to Wainwright’s oeuvre, because that’s how probability works… probably. Therefore, when I heard about her new show Riot Women, about a group of menopausal women forming a rock band in Hebden Bridge (unofficial lesbian capital of Britain), it seemed like a slam-dunk that we’d be getting a fresh sapphic infusion into our Sunday night viewing (or Wednesday in the US).

I am here today because this show is gay in an effortless and substantial way, but if you are looking for epic sapphic romance (or indeed any functional relationships at all), I caution you to look elsewhere!

The upbeat if chaotic trailers give the impression that Riot Women will be fun, like Last Tango in Halifax, just… amped up with a few extra hormones and guitar riffs. However, it delves into some seriously dark stuff from the get-go that escalates over the course of the season, far more akin to the bracing drama of Happy Valley. Please refer to this Venn diagram of the three major Sally Wainwright works on the BBC with themes of Riot Women overlaid in order to understand exactly what you may be getting into:

So, how do our Riot Women get together? When pub landlady Jess rings around her friends fishing for anyone up for a charity talent contest, she inadvertently catches a couple of her pals at a pivotal moment.

Beth, played by Joanna Scanlon, is a teacher that has hit rock bottom. Abandoned by her husband, ignored by her newly-married son and feeling utterly invisible in both her personal and professional life, the call from Jess is a literal life-saver. Beth immediately and desperately latches onto the nascent idea as just the outlet she needs to transform her despair into an outpouring of creativity.

Holly, played by Tamsin Grieg, is on the cusp of retiring as a police officer, but the ongoing drag of policing life and her concerns for her mum’s rapidly worsening dementia are distracting her from embracing her plans for a new lease on life.

Jess herself is feeling overrun by the multiple generations of her giant family (plus hangers-on) who are somehow all squeezing into the rooms above the gay-friendliest pub in Hebden Bridge.

When the three get together — with some volunteers Holly drags along, including her lesbian cop pal plus her neurodivergent-coded sister Yvonne —it’s not initially smooth sailing. Beth is the definition of that friend that wants to take everything a bit too seriously, whereas most of the others are just happy to ham it up doing Waterloo.

Everything changes when Beth encounters Kitty (Rosalie Craig), a younger woman doing her best Courtney Love impression at a karaoke bar. Despite being clearly trollied, the raw emotion of Kitty’s singing mesmerises Beth and she invites Kitty to crash on her couch and cajoles her into joining the band. One slight hitch: Kitty was arrested by Holly on her last-ever shift, after going wild with vodka and knives in the local supermarket (and then trashing her ex-boyfriend’s car with a sledgehammer shortly after release).

It’s quickly clear that Kitty is the missing piece needed to turn the rag-tag group into a real rock band, and her creative chemistry with Beth soon explodes, translating into songs on topics that hit a nerve with all the women: relationships with shitbag men, the menopause, and above all, the anger they’ve all struggled to express. But the presence of Kitty, and the trail of destruction she leaves in her wake, will have major ramifications for everyone.

While the promotion of the show leant heavily into the whole “menopausal women form a rock band” thing, the band is just a device to bring this disparate group of women together and give them a mouthpiece for the many feelings Sally Wainwright has about aging women’s lot in life. This can lead to a bit of clunky preaching, especially in the early episodes. I found it a lot stronger when we were shown rather than told; a fantastic, if cringey, example being when Beth is called in by her headmaster for a stern talking-to and he nervously skirts around and outright disbelieves what she’s telling him about her mental state.

The band takes a backburner to what turns into the primary arc for the season: Beth and Kitty’s connection, in terms of both their burgeoning friendship and an unexpected shared secret. It’s fair to say that there are no major romantic storylines in the show, but I’d absolutely class what happens between Beth and Kitty as a kind of a love story, between two women who probably would have ended up dead if they hadn’t found each other at just the right time.

Before we talk more about that, I think it’s important to bring up two things. Firstly: the show’s gayness. While I was semi-surprised that none of the protagonists are out-and-out gay (although there are a few major hints about queerness from Kitty), it is jam-packed with queer minor characters: Nisha is a lesbian copper; one of Jess’s daughters is bi and involved with a rival bar owner that has lesbian swagger for days, and another daughter is trans. Jess’s bar is swathed in gay and trans pride flags and queer stuff comes up frequently in conversation in a pretty natural way.

It’s hinted at a couple of times that people think Beth might be a bit gay, which she gently but firmly denies. I think because the show’s set itself up to be so casually inclusive, the jokes around this work really well, and it doesn’t feel like there’s any queer-baiting going on. Still, I’m not giving up on the possibility that Beth doth protest too much!

The second thing is that this show really has it in for men. As someone that’s been redoubtably gay for quite a long time now, I’ve always found the stereotype of the “man-hating lesbian” pretty amusing. Chiefly because no-one lays into men more than the women that actually have relationships with them. I found an old interview with Sally Wainwright (who is married to a man) where, in response to accusations of being anti-men in her writing, she says: “I don’t think so. I just don’t focus on them. I resent it because there’s this perception that I consciously write men as twats. I don’t.” As evidenced in Riot Women, I can only conclude that she subconsciously writes men as twats. The only man I didn’t want to punch was Kitty’s cheeky tattooed drug dealer friend.

All of the band members have been burnt by the full spectrum of toxic men, from the merely useless to serious, serial abusers. The show’s not interested in presenting any idealised versions of romance, and I really don’t think it would work. That leaves room to explore what goes on between Beth and Kitty, which is a relationship that is both desperate and destructive as well as safe and fulfilling in a way neither has experienced before.

For me, the strongest scenes on the show are the two-handers between these characters, with some absolutely stunning performances from Scanlon and Craig. Riot Women is unlike anything I’ve seen Joanna Scanlon in before; usually she’s a strident ball-breaker, but in this, she flits between fragile, elated, defensive, gentle and rancorous multiple times a scene, sometimes barely saying a word. Rosalie Craig is more often a theatre actor, so Riot Women is my first exposure to her, but I don’t think there’s anything as terrifying as Rosallie Craig silently staring into the Yorkshire countryside in abject despair.

I was surprised at how violent the show gets – the second half of the season definitely veers far closer to Happy Valley territory than I was expecting. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, because the experiences these women go through are shockingly real. But I think it’s so much harder to watch characters getting hurt when you’ve started to make that investment in them, and it’s jarring how quickly scenes can flip from joking with the band to pretty graphic assault. I want to avoid spoilers, but I do think it’s important to note that Sally Wainwright definitely has learnt her lesson when it comes to killing off lesbian characters, although that doesn’t mean that she won’t put them through the ringer to make a wider point.

Riot Women overall is a heady mix of heavy themes and uproarious fun, elevated by great performances across its stellar cast. It’s definitely well-poised for a second season and here’s hoping that happens (and maybe even with a bit more bonus gay stuff).

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