Happy Valley creator’s new drama set to premiere

The stars of a new drama by Happy Valley creator Sally Wainwright are set to descend on West Yorkshire later for a special screening.

Set in Hebden Bridge, Riot Women follows the fortunes of five menopausal women who form a punk rock band to take part in a local talent contest.

The six-part series features Friday Night Dinner’s Tamsin Greig, musical theatre actress Rosalie Craig and Scott & Bailey’s Amelia Bullmore, alongside Joanna Scanlon and Lorraine Ashbourne.

Wainwright said her latest series was “even more Hebden-centric than Happy Valley”, adding: “You can’t beat the landscape”.

Explaining why she had chosen to set Riot Women in West Yorkshire, the multi-BAFTA award-winning writer said: “I do like writing in my own vernacular because I think I can get more comedy out of the language if I’m writing in my own dialect.”

Hebden Bridge, a bohemian market town located in the Upper Calder Valley, “just looks gorgeous on camera”, added Wainwright, whose previous works include Last Tango in Halifax and Gentleman Jack.

“You get a great sense of place, which I think is important in a TV show in order to feel like you really know where you are when you turn it on,” she said.

“It has a very particular atmosphere, and I think you achieve that by being in a specific part of the world.”

Tuesday’s premiere will take place at the Hebden Picture House in the heart of the town.

The show, which Huddersfield-born Wainwright described as “uplifting”, will begin on BBC One on Sunday at 21:00 BST.

“I had the idea for the series about 10 years ago,” she revealed.

“It was about finding a life-affirming way to talk about the menopause. I’ve always wanted to write about a rock band, so it was just putting those two things together.”

She said she wanted to write about the menopause “because I was going through it, it was interesting and something I hadn’t really thought about until it started to happen.”

“My mum told me that she laughed her way through the menopause, and I thought I was going to do that too,” she said.

“Looking back though, I don’t think she did laugh her way through it, and I think she was having quite a tough time with it.

“People just didn’t talk about it then, but people are talking about the menopause a lot more now and we can actually have shows on telly that are about women going through the menopause.”

Ashbourne, who plays the band’s drummer Jess Burchill said locating the show in Hebden Bridge was “very clever”.

“I fell in love with Hebden Bridge,” she said

“It’s idyllic and Sally choosing to set her story in this beautiful, thriving little corner of the world where all this drama plays out, is very clever.

“Riot Women looks at the importance of companionship and the joy of friendship.

“It’s about being given a second chance and fulfilling dreams. It’s a unique angle on female empowerment. It’s a celebration.”