BritBox trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Js9KPL49W3g
How come the most innovative things in music are created by outsiders?
I love, love, LOVE "Riot Women." I was aware of it, wasn't that excited about watching it, but searching for shows after finishing "Blue Lights" I was doing research and I found out "Riot Women" was a SALLY WAINWRIGHT show! Wainwright was the creator of "Happy Valley," which was my number one streaming television recommendation until it left Netflix and they made a third, not as good, season. All of "Happy Valley" is now available on BritBox, as is "Riot Women," which is getting press and advertising and...they don't make shows this good in the U.S.
Old women form a punk band. That was the hype. That's not that exciting. I figured it was another of these productions focusing on the music as opposed to the people, riding on the coattails of a sound in order to get fans to tune in. Nothing could be further from the truth. There's no playing of music, no band rehearsals until the underpinning story has rolled out.
What we've got here is...
Joanna Scanlan as Beth Thornton. Beth is depressed, her husband left her and her kid keeps her at arm's length and her brother is a money-grubber and she's seen as an old crone at the school where she teaches, a job she'd like to retire from, but she can't.
And then Lorraine Ashbourne as Jess Burchill calls her and asks her if she wants to join her band. It's a lark, only one tune at a talent show at the kids' school.
Now I watched an entire episode of "Riot Women" before realizing that Joanna Scanlan was the big boss, DI Vivienne Deering, in "No Offence," another British cop show that is also on BritBox. But in "Riot Women" Scanlan's hair is brown as opposed to blonde, and she's meek as opposed to forcefully in control and... I'm sure if you're British, you recognize Scanlan, she's a star over there, but the degree to which she folds into the role...that is acting.
As for Ashbourne... She played the role of Daphne Sparrow, matriarch of the crime family in "Sherwood," another BritBox series. In "Sherwood" Ashbourne is intense, at times evil, so I kept waiting for her to evidence the same characteristics in "Riot Women," but she does not. In "Riot Women" she's the grandmother, whose unappreciative daughter with three kids from two men is living in her house, a woman who owns a bar, pays the bills, keeps the whole thing together.
Now to illustrate the quality of the above-mentioned shows, on RottenTomatoes, "Happy Valley" has a rating of 98/94, "No Offence" doesn't have enough views for a critics' rating, but the audience rating is 77, and "Sherwood" has a 96/55...I always ignore low ratings from the hoi polloi, when it comes to the wisdom of the crowd...you just can't trust it when it comes to visual entertainment. My point being that these are quality shows that I wholeheartedly recommend, slam dunks, you won't be e-mailing me that watching was a waste of time, anything but.
So what we've got here in "Riot Women" is post-menopausal females, considered over the hill by men and so much of the public, but still able and vital at their core. And Jess rounds up the girls for a band, the only one with any real skills is Beth, who plays the piano and...
They set to arguing about what to play. WATERLOO! Isn't that what self-respecting creatures of the last century should be singing, a safe, successful song from the past?
NO! It is suggested they need to play a song that is the essence of rock and roll, with an edge, with danger, and the group is set to guessing and...
In my mind, there's one specific song that fits this equation.
There's a suggestion of "Back in Black," which stuns me. Most visual productions are out of touch, but these women know that song and that album, it's bedrock if you're of that age. And I'm thinking of the quintessential rock song, there really is one, and then the choice is revealed and I'm absolutely correct, SATISFACTION!
I CAN'T GET NO!
Seems great until one woman complains it's from the viewpoint of a man and therefore undoable and if you haven't had a squabble in a band, then you haven't been in one.
And Jess is complaining about feeling invisible, and then she and itinerant Kitty write a number based on the hook YOU'RE JUST LIKE YOUR MOTHER! That's what Jess's now gone husband always used to say to her.
And they create this song at the piano, and I'm sitting there waiting for some tripe, but it's actually good, singable with the truth absent from most of today's hit parade! They're singing about what they know. And when it is performed for the group, the most uptight woman, the stick in the mud, starts to cry, because she can relate to it.
There's much more in the show, but...
What starts out as a lark, doing one song at the talent show, morphs into creating a real band...and the joy of that is delineated, and being in a group and playing music lifts everybody's experience and I daresay IT'S THE MOST ROCK AND ROLL EVENT OF THE YEAR!
Ah, the year is short... I'll say 2025 too. Because most of today's popular music is bland, or a cartoon, fake-edgy, you might be able to dance to it, but you can't truly relate to it. But the song written in "Riot Women"? ABSOLUTELY! How come Sally Wainwright knows how to connect with the audience better than the major labels, the traditional music business? Because they don't start from the same sheet of paper, for Wainwright there's no issue of looking cool, being cool. Label execs are afraid of releasing something that hipsters decry. But if you're outside the system...
"Riot Women" is "KPop Demon Hunters" for adults. Targeting women who grew up with Hole and still have anger and an edge, however deeply it might be buried.
Just one complaint... I started "Riot Women" not knowing that the wankers at BritBox were dripping it out week by week. The bottom line is in terms of enjoyment, of flow, of a peak experience, all at once is far superior. These outlets break up the season for some faux business reason, but if they dropped all the episodes at once people could go deep and talk about it and... Most people don't have a BritBox account. I'm writing about two episodes, do you think they're going to sign up for that? No. But the outlet wants to keep me subscribing for another month or two...
Life doesn't have these kinds of breaks, why should our visual entertainment? Serials went out with Dickens. That's not how they release novels today. Hell, it's hard enough to get people's attention, let them partake at the trough and eat as much as they want.
However, you can stream all of "Happy Valley" and "No Offence" and "Sherwood" on BritBox, but...
Despite the best PR efforts of BritBox, "Riot Women" will remain a niche show. But if it were on Netflix...
Remember, distribution is KING!
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