Picture the scene: five middle-aged male actors playing rockstars are lolling about on sofas in a recording studio. In front of them is an attractive young female producer; the men start making obscene gestures behind her about her bottom, sniggering and giggling like schoolboys, one sticks out his tongue through his fingers, intimating what he would like to do to her. Such a scene, if it was ever commissioned, would no doubt have been left on the cutting-room floor. It would be seen as puerile, sexist and outdated. Well, it was commissioned, and by the BBC, and is being broadcast this month in the final episode of Riot Women. Everything is accurate in my description except for one detail: those men are actually middle-aged women, and the target of their offensive behaviour is a man.

Riot Women, by Sally Wainwright, is not the first drama to challenge traditional gender roles in the name of female empowerment, but it really seems to hate men. The six-part series is ostensibly about how five menopausal women come together to make music and inspire each other to rise above the difficulties they face. But another way of seeing it is that........

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