There is a photograph of Bridget Christie and her siblings, she says, taken in a forest in the 70s, that sounds so dreamy and nostalgic I can almost picture its curling edges: nine children, probably dressed in hand-me-downs, smiling out from under a big oak tree. “Or was it eight of us, and my eldest brother had to take the photo?” she wonders aloud. It must have been hard to keep track when there were so many of them.
We have been talking about her childhood in Gloucester, as the youngest of all those kids, and the forests that inspired her new TV comedy drama. A big oak tree stands in the centre of The Change, seemingly transported straight from Christie’s childhood. The heroine, a tree-climbing girl like Christie was, hid a time capsule in its boughs some time in the late 70s. We meet Linda, played by Christie, at her 50th birthday party – weary, put-upon, menopausal – wondering what happened to her life. For years, in stacks of notebooks, she has recorded the time she has devoted to caring for her family and home, the invisible work usually done by women. She decides to take some of that time back, and heads off on a motorbike (Christie has one, too, bought around the time she turned 50 last year) on a heroic quest in search of who she used to be. That time capsule should have some clues.
