Another writer might have reduced the Riot Women to caricatures of small-town English naughtiness à la The Full Monty. But Wainwright never gives us the chance to perceive them as quaint, which would just be a form of objectification. When the series opens, Beth (Slow Horses’ Joanna Scanlan), a divorced teacher who feels abandoned by a married son in thrall to his snobby in-laws, is about to hang herself. Then the phone rings. “Do you wanna be in me rock band?” asks a pub owner pal, Jess (Lorraine Ashbourne). The all-female group they assemble includes Holly, a cop on the verge of retirement (Tamsin Greig); the younger colleague (Taj Atwal) she tries, perhaps naively, to defend against sexual harassment from a cruel male officer; and Holly’s midwife sister (Amelia Bullmore). Left to care for dementia-stricken parents and blamed by their kids for the sins of absent or philandering exes, their problems are real. Instead of covering ABBA, as they’d intended, they pour these experiences into original punk anthems.