Riot Women Seeing Red

Five well-seasoned women. Five messy lives. One powerhouse of a punk rock band.

RIOT WOMEN, a new BBC series now streaming on Prime Video in the U.S., landed in January—and it speaks to me like nothing I’ve watched in years.

Episode one opens with Beth preparing to kill herself. That may sound grim, but stay with me.

Two phone calls interrupt her.

The first shows us who Beth is: kind, mild-mannered, endlessly tolerant—and invisible. Like many women her age, she moves through life largely unseen. Her mother has dementia. Her husband has left. Her son ignores her.

The second call comes from her friend Jess, who runs a pub. Jess asks if Beth will play keyboard in her new band.

A new band?

The embers inside Beth flare to life.

Then we meet Kitty, seemingly Beth’s polar opposite, though just as self-destructive. Drugged and unraveling, she storms through a market, knocking over displays, threatening customers, even brandishing a knife at police. She’s daring someone or something to end it.

Later, she pours a lifetime of pain into karaoke at a dive bar, belting out the furious refrain from Violet by Hole: “Go on, take everything, take everything, I want you to.”

Beth is transfixed. She instantly recognizes Kitty as the lead singer their band needs, and the soul she most needs to connect with. Kitty, meanwhile, is drawn to Beth’s apparent normality, like a wild animal cautiously approaching safety.

Three other women and three young backup singers round out the band, each carrying their own complicated history. A standout subplot follows Holly, a recently retired cop who tries to help a rookie being harassed on the job, with disastrous results.

Not every good deed is rewarded. That’s part of what makes the show feel so real.

It’s funny. Heartbreaking. The characters feel like people you know. Their relationships are messy, but if they hold on to each other, they might survive.

And when the band finally takes the stage with their first original song, Seeing Red, an anthem about menopause, the energy is electric. You’ll want to shout the refrain along with them.

This is the most compelling new series I’ve seen in a long time. Transformational, even. And not just because it’s about women my age breaking free from the roles society, and their families, hand them.

It’s a show that screams, Watch out, world. We may be older, but we’re still here. With feelings, desires, and agency. And we’re not going to be silent anymore.

❤️Margie

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