Sally Wainwright: ‘I worry the way TV represents women is going backwards’

From Happy Valley to Gentleman Jack, any Sally Wainwright series is an event. None, though, has ever been spun off into a live gig.

‘We should definitely have a crack at a tour!’ laughs Rosalie Craig. ‘More fool anyone who asks us,’ adds Joanna Scanlan. ‘But we’d love to do it…’

Rosalie, star of The Hack and countless West End musicals, and Bafta-winner Joanna are talking to Metro about Riot Women, Sally’s new series which returns to the West Yorkshire turf of her biggest hits.

Joanna’s suicidal teacher and Rosalie’s self-destructive freeloader, who form an odd-couple friendship and song-writing partnership, are joined by Tamsin Greig’s retiring copper, Amelia Bullmore’s punctilious midwife and Lorraine Ashbourne’s generous-to-a-fault publican in forming the titular punk band in response to marital breakdowns, grown-up children, job stasis and the menopause.

Amid shambolic rehearsals and conflicting agendas, a bond begins to form as these women find the power and their voice, breaking the rules and demanding to be recognised.

Rosalie describes the writing as ‘like a musical score: if you miss a note or a beat, it doesn’t sound right’. It is certainly classic Sally Wainwright: hilarious, devastating and all points in between.

‘I started writing it because I was going through the menopause,’ explains Sally. ‘I’d got quite a dark place with life’s slings and arrows, my mum developing dementia and having to deal with that.

‘The menopause kind of creeps up on you, and I wanted to write about the things that tend to happen to women at a certain age, but in a way that was entertaining and uplifting.’

Remarkably, the cast had to learn their instruments more or less from scratch: as the band slowly gel on screen, the same thing was happening off it.

For Joanna, it was ‘a major high to play with the others. ‘I come from a musical family, sang in a choir through my childhood and I’ve loved classical music all my life, but it was extremely demanding to reach Beth’s level on the piano. I was taught by our musical director and a concert pianist who were both really encouraging, and it was amazingly satisfying. It was also terribly good for my brain – I felt sharper.’

Did she fulfil any youthful dreams of starting a band? Joanna ponders, then starts laughing guiltily. ‘This is really pathetic, but when we were 11, me and my best friend had a makeshift guitar and stupid lyrics. We’d ring random telephone numbers and sing to people, then put the phone down. So I was in a band, but only insofar as I was a nuisance phone caller!’

Even Rosalie, a trained singer who was ‘beyond impressed’ with the progress of her castmates, had to rethink her craft to sing Riot Women’s songs, in reality written by Brighton punk duo Arxx.

‘I had to forget everything technical and sing from a place where I was expressing feeling, but not in a musical theatre way. I just had to go for it, screaming down a microphone. It was so cathartic: Kitty speaks her mind and she’s not afraid to be herself or get on the wrong side of people, and I’d love to take a bit of that for myself.

‘I pretended to be in musicals in the garden as a kid, but I was never in a band. Through Kitty, I really understood why the boys at school would be in their garages, shouting and playing music together. That would have solved a lot of things when I was younger!’

With Bridget Christie’s brilliant The Change cancelled after two seasons, and despite the excellent work of Davina McCall and others in making the menopause part of mainstream conversation, rather than something to bury or apologise for, there remains a dearth of TV drama addressing the experience honestly.

It is something Sally sees as symptomatic of a wider problem. ‘I do worry that we’re going backwards in the way we represent women on telly. There’s a lot of telly these days where women are playing lead parts but they’re parts for men where they’ve just cast a woman.

‘A lot of stuff is homogenous – cop shows and thrillers, and not about the female experience or women at all.’

Just like Happy Valley and so much of her work, Riot Women should redress the balance a little. So might, I ask Sally, a potential season two see the introduction of a sixth band member: Sarah Lancashire’s Sgt Catherine Cawood?

‘I think that’s a very good idea!’ she replies. The Hebden Bridgeverse, anyone? We predict a riot.

Riot Women begins on Sunday October 12 at 9pm on BBC One and BBC iPlayer.

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