Riot Women, written and directed by Sally Wainwright, tells the story of five menopausal women who have at least 50 problems each. They deal with life by forming a punk rock band. The series will air in weekly installments in the U.S. on BritBox beginning in January 2026. I’m keeping this review spoiler free in case you haven’t seen all the episodes. The entire series is available on the BBC iPlayer.

Riot Women is about the women in the middle, the sandwich generation. They have ailing parents and ungrateful kids. They’ve been deserted by their husbands. Their families take them for granted. They are generally invisible and inconsequential to everyone in their world. They are depressed, they are angry, they are frazzled. They do not like it like that.

Jess (Lorraine Ashbourne) hears about a talent show to raise money for refugees. She plays drums and hatches the idea to form a rock band to play in the talent show. Jess calls her piano playing friend Beth (Joanna Scanlan) and asks her to join. Beth is literally saved by the phone call and gets excited over the idea of playing angry, punk rock.

Jess recruits Holly (Tamsin Greig), who promises to learn to play bass. Holly recruits her sister Yvonne (Amelia Bullmore) who will learn to play guitar. They have six weeks to get good enough to play one song. All they need now is a singer.

When we meet Kitty (Rosalie Craig), she’s ranging through a grocery store gobbling pills and booze and looking for a large knife to use on a man. Kitty has plenty of problems, a history of assault, and untreated childhood trauma. But she can sing. Good heavens, she can sing. Beth hears her singing karaoke and invites her to be in the rock band.

If you’ve watched many British shows you know some of these five faces. Every one of them had a strong part, well developed, great dialog and plenty of drama. They are all brilliant playing their characters. The news to me was Rosalie Craig as Kitty. I’d never seen her in anything before. She was magnificent! Kitty was a challenging character – troubled, angry, defiant, frequently drunk, while also hurt, vulnerable and scared. On top of all that she had to sing with powerful raw emotion.

The actors really did learn to play their instruments and did their own singing. The original songs were written by Arxx. These songs were about emotional abuse from men, menopause, and fighting back against the patriarchy.

Many of the subplots in the series dealt with the disgusting and disappointing behavior of men. Beth’s son Tom (Jonny Green) mostly ignored his mom and trusted anything a man said over anything a woman said. Holly’s fellow police officer Nisha (Taj Atwal) was being harassed at work by a male officer. Kitty’s married boyfriend was physically abusive.

Other subplots were simply funny. Lots of characters, lots of subplots, and only six episodes. Every minute was important and full of energy. Sally Wainwright’s sublime way with dialog makes the action sing.

Tamsin Greig as Holly had some of the best dialog. She got to deliver several pointed feminist zingers.

Not only were the main roles full of nuance and complexity, there were excellent actors doing good work in supporting roles. A few of them are Anne Reid, Sue Johnston, Kevin Doyle, Nicholas Gleaves, Ben Batt, Shannon Lavelle, Mark Bazeley, and Jonathan Pryce. There was a trans actor (Macy Seelochan) playing Jess’s daughter. She was a regular on the series, which I understand is a bit new for the BBC.

An Easter egg for the longtime Sally Wainwright fans is the Yorkshire police collar number on Nisha’s shoulder. It was the number retired by Catherine Cawood (Sarah Lancashire) in Happy Valley. Wainwright pointed it out on Instagram.

I loved the way the women stuck together, supported each other, and grew stronger together. The final moments of the last episode were a powerful cliffhanger. Come on, BBC, we need a series 2 with these women and their take no shit attitudes.

Half of the episodes were directed by Amanda Brotchie, half by Sally Wainwright. I give this series the highest ratings possible and urge you to watch it if you can.