Sally Wainwright’s new BBC drama Riot Women opens not with music, but with the sound of ice clinking in a glass and tonic fizzing as it’s poured over gin.

Beth (Joanna Scanlan) calmly prepares to end her life in a beautiful, light-filled room overlooking green gardens and a vista of rolling hills – a quiet, almost idyllic setting for an act of despair. It’s a devastating and deeply ironic beginning, setting the emotional stakes with precision.

Riot Women takes its name from, and subtly reworks, the 1990s Riot Grrrl feminist punk movement. This is no whimsical story of midlife reinvention. When Beth is drawn, almost accidentally, into forming a punk band with four other women of a certain age, the series unfolds as something richer: a fierce, surprising exploration of care-giving, menopause, resilience and the reclamation of voice.

The ensemble cast is crucial. Alongside Scanlan, Wainwright brings together a group of formidable performers including Amelia Bullmore, a frequent collaborator whose presence links this series to the distinctive tone of earlier work such as At Home with the Braithwaites (2000) and Happy Valley (2014-2023).

Lorraine Ashbourne is excellent as Jess, bringing dry humour and sharp, unfiltered observations that cut through the show’s darker moments. Tamsin Greig’s Holly, meanwhile, brings a brisk edge that undercuts sentimentality without ever losing emotional depth. Together, they capture the show’s tonal dexterity – its ability to let humour and anger sit side by side.

Rosalie Craig as Kitty – the youngest member of the group – adds another layer. In one striking scene, a........

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