Recap: Riot Women (Season 1, Episodes 1-3): From Canteens to Power Chords

Dust off your Doc Martens and crank the amp; if you haven’t started watching Riot Women on BritBox yet, you’re missing what might be Sally Wainwright’s (Happy Valley) most rebellious, heartbreaking, and gloriously loud series to date. Here's my recap and review of the first three episodes of Season 1.

Forget the polite, pastel version of menopause we usually get on TV. This is the story of five women in Hebden Bridge who decide that instead of going quietly into midlife, they’d rather scream into a microphone.

In the first episode, we open in a shockingly dark place. Beth (a phenomenal Joanna Scanlan) is at her breaking point—literally standing on a chair with a noose—when her phone rings. It’s her friend Jess (Lorraine Ashbourne) with a “stupid” idea: entering a local talent contest… with a punk band.

At the same time, we meet Holly (Tamsin Greig), a police officer facing retirement like a slow-moving funeral, and Kitty (Rosalie Craig), a chaotic human firecracker she arrests for trashing a supermarket. By the end of the hour, the bones of an accidental band are in place, less a career move than a survival instinct.

Into the second episode, this is where the show really locks in. Beth spots Kitty drunkenly belting karaoke at a local bar and realizes the shoplifting menace is also the missing piece of their sound. Despite Holly’s objections (again: she literally arrested her), Kitty joins rehearsals.

The lineup fills out with Holly’s sister, Yvonne (Amelia Bullmore), and suddenly the group starts to resemble an actual band. But the bigger spark is between Beth and Kitty, whose connection quickly becomes charged, complicated, and deeply personal.

And in the third episode, everything cracks open. Kitty stumbles onto a long-buried secret involving Beth, one that the show is clearly setting up as emotionally explosive, and handles it in the most Kitty way possible: badly. Her spiral threatens to fracture the group just as they’re finding their voice, leaving us with a cliffhanger that could either fuse this partnership for good or burn the whole thing down.

After watching the first three episodes, Riot Women lives up to its name. It’s funny, furious, tender, and unapologetically loud—a middle finger to the idea that women become invisible after 50. If it sticks the landing, this could easily end up as one of the year’s best dramas.

Sally Wainwright has always written brilliant women “of a certain age,” but Riot Women feels especially unfiltered. This isn’t just about hot flashes or empty nests, it’s about the slow fury of spending decades being a mother, daughter, worker, and wife… and realizing you misplaced yourself somewhere along the way.

The casting of Joanna Scanlan and Rosalie Craig is electric together. Scanlan plays Beth with a quiet, aching invisibility that makes Craig’s volatile, self-destructive Kitty even more dangerous and irresistible. Their creative situationship is the show’s emotional engine, and it’s already one of the most compelling dynamics on TV this year.

And while the TV bands are usually a gamble, here, it works. The cast learned their instruments, the songs (by ARXX) are scrappy and raw, and when they launch into it, that feels like three decades of swallowed rage finally getting air.

Yes, while the plot leans into classic Wainwright coincidence, everyone just happens to collide at the right moment. But when the dialogue is this sharp and the performances this strong, it’s easy (and kind of joyful) to go along with it. Overall, I give the series so far a 9/10. 

Have you seen Riot Women? So who are you? Stoic, tightly wound Holly… or glorious chaos goblin Kitty? And what do you think that secret between Beth and Kitty really is? Let’s scream about it in the comments. 

You can catch Riot Women on BritBox with a new episode every Thursday.