Television Notes From All Over (An Occasional Feature): Special "And You Thought the Clash Were Angry" Edition

Okay, so a certain Shady Dame and I have been watching a BritBox show -- a comedy/drama -- from last year called Riot Women and we're totally hooked.

The premise: A bunch of mostly menopausal British gals with shall we say difficult lives (the show is set in the present) get a chance to form a punk band and against the odds decide to go for it. Hilarity (not to mention violence, anger, and all sorts of obstacles in their way) ensues.

Seriously, I lack the words to describe how much fun -- and occasionally how outrageous -- the show is. Plus the music, featuring a lot of well-chosen vintage punk and New Wave stuff on the soundtrack plus some new songs written specifically for the titular Riot Women by an actual alt-rock gal band called ARXX, is terrific, and the acting is fabulous across the board. I'm particularly taken with Rosalie Craig (the red-headed hot mess guitar player in the trailer, who's a real-life Brit musical theater star with amazing pipes), but they're all great, and apparently most of them learned how to play their instruments for the show, which is totally cool. And I've gotta say, that scene above where Tamsin Grieg (as an ex-cop) has to count up the frets of her bass before they start a song is one of the funniest things I've ever seen outside of Spinal Tap.

There are six episodes in the first season; as of this writing, the BBC has announced it's renewing the show for a second batch, and I can't wait.

Hey -- trust me, you'll love it; if you've got access to BritBox, pounce. If not, consult (as they used to say) your local listings.