Review: 'Riot Women' has a rockin' time with middle-aged, menopausal women

This is read by an automated voice.Please report any issues or inconsistencies here.

Sally Wainwright, the creator and writer of “Happy Valley” (policewoman story), “Gentleman Jack” (historical lesbian drama), “Last Tango in Halifax” (septuagenarian romance) and last year’s “Renegade Nell” (period action fantasy) has created and written a new series,”Riot Women,” about some friends, new friends and not-quite friends — most “on the wrong side of 50” — who come together to form a band to play at a talent show.What begins as a lark turns serious and opens the door to a drama-infused comedy — or perhaps a comedy-flecked drama — whose busy first season resolves much but, in its final moments, opens the door to an already scheduled second.Set in a West Yorkshire city that functions narratively as a small town, it folds some of Wainwright’s themes into a kitchen-sink feminist musical soap opera on the themes of friendship, family, maternity, misogyny and age.

As a story of unlikely people coming together in an unlikely project, it recalls such films as “The Commitments,” “The Full Monty” and “Calendar Girls,” though it might also be seen as a middle-aged version of “We Are Lady Parts,” minus the South Asian specificity.It’s aspirational, as all such stories must be to make them worth telling, but tense; one worries things might go seriously wrong, even as the implied promise of the series is that they might not.This is true from the opening scene, in which Beth (Joanna Scanlan), whose husband left her a year before; whose married son, Tom (Jonny Green) ignores her calls and texts; and who, feeling invisible in the world, sets out to hang herself.

She’s interrupted twice by phone calls.The first is from her brother, angry that Beth sold their mother’s house to pay for her round-the-clock care; he wants his future inheritance.

The second is from Jess (Lorraine Ashbourne), who runs a pub.She’s been fooling arou...