Well, this is a bit of a downer, isn’t it? Those were my precise thoughts about halfway through the first episode of Riot Women, the new BBC One drama from Happy Valley mastermind Sally Wainwright. Like Happy Valley, it’s set around Calderdale in West Yorkshire; like Happy Valley, its focus is firmly trained on women in midlife. But somehow, the introductory 30 minutes or so of Riot Women seemed to be even more depressing than a show that dealt with inherited trauma, addiction, murder and sexual assault. Or so I thought.
The opening scenes are certainly pretty harrowing. Beth, a menopausal English teacher played by The Thick of It’s Joanna Scanlan, is about to take her own life, until the phone rings; her brother is on the other end, complaining about the cost of the care home that she has selected for their mother, who has dementia (the undertone of their conversation, inevitably, is that Beth should be the one to shoulder the caring responsibility).
