SARAH VINE’S My TV Week: A funny, clever show about menopause… for a change
THE CHANGE
WEDNESDAYS, 10 p.m., CHANNEL 4
Finally an intelligent, funny, nuanced, non-patronizing piece of TV about menopause. Finally a show that gets it.
What it means, what it feels like to be a woman at that stage of life. Not so much from a dry medical point of view, but from the emotions and experiences of everyone involved – including spouses, friends and children.
It was written by comedian Bridget Christie, who also plays the main character Linda.
We open in her and her husband Steve’s garden, at a gathering for her 50th birthday. Steve (excellently played by Omid Djalili) does his party trick of catching sausages in his mouth.
Linda’s two grumpy teenagers find the whole setup unbearable, especially the embarrassing way their mother swallows her wine. Apparently too loud.
Bridget Christie and Jerome Flynn (both pictured) in The Change, a new six-part series that takes a refreshingly nuanced look at menopause. While Christie plays the main character Linda, Flynn makes a cameo appearance as the reclusive Pig Man
Omid Djalili (pictured) plays Linda’s husband Steve. The show opens at Linda’s 50th birthday party in the couple’s garden, where Steve demonstrates his party trick of catching sausages in his mouth
It’s these little, almost disposable observations that somehow resonate so much that this is so funny and clever.
Christie has that comedian’s ability to say the unspeakable, to ambush the audience in a way that’s both comforting and subversive.
Menopause is a universal female experience. Not all women have children, but we all experience menopause sooner or later.
Society has always acted as if menopause didn’t exist
And yet, for some reason, society has always preferred to behave as if it didn’t really exist.
Perhaps because, as Linda so well outlines in an opening line about a man at the supermarket checkout and a pack of peas, menopausal women are often invisible.
The world takes us for granted, a truth exemplified by the diaries Linda keeps of all the banal but vital tasks she does that no one notices.
It’s all there. The way menopause stalks you with symptoms that feel like something else at first before coalescing into the obvious: How could you have missed it, and yet you did.
British writer Sarah Vine gave Channel 4’s The Change a five-star rating
That feeling of life passing you by, of nature conspiring against you. The way you suddenly realize that, as Linda puts it, “I’ve spent most of my adult life putting other people’s feelings and needs before my own.”
So much of the story surrounding menopause has to do with the unpleasant physical side of it.
But what this shows is that it can also be liberating, as it gives women the opportunity to stop caring what anyone thinks of them.
Linda demonstrates this by embarking on a mid-life menopausal crisis/discovery journey aboard her old motorcycle.
Along the way are plenty of bittersweet adventures and great cameos, including Paul Whitehouse, Monica Dolan, Liza Tarbuck, Jim Howick, Tanya Moodie, Jerome Flynn, and others.
As the sign on my barber’s wall says, real women don’t have hot flashes, they have power surges. Cheesy, but true.
Gripping… but hilarious
THERE SHE GOES
BBC iPLAYER
There She Goes stars David Tennant and Jessica Hynes (pictured) as Simon and Emily, the parents of the nonverbal and sometimes violent Rosie, played by Miley Locke (pictured center)
My goodness, David Tennant is busy.
He can also be seen on ITV in Litvinenko, starring Michael Sheen in both a third series of their lockdown comedy Staged on BBC1 and an upcoming second series of Good Omens on Amazon, plus the voiceover for the BBC’s Spy In The Ocean nature series and being involved in some Star Wars thing on Disney+.
Oh, and he’ll be reprising his role as Doctor Who later this year. If I didn’t know better I’d say he had to pay alimony. But he seems to be happily married and has five children. Whatever he’s wearing, can I have some?
Anyway, this is great. I’ve had friends and relatives face the realities of living with a severely disabled child or sibling, and this sums it up brilliantly.
Tennant and Jessica Hynes are Simon and Emily, parents of Rosie (Miley Locke, left with David and Jessica), a 13-year-old with a chromosomal disorder.
She is non-verbal, occasionally violent, unpredictable and a danger to herself and others. Life with her is a relentless round of exhausting challenges, both physical and emotional.
The reality of having such a child is shown unflinchingly here. And so is the love they feel for her.
The whole thing is treated with a lightness of touch and a warmth that makes it a joy to watch: hilarious and harrowing in equal measure.
Makes me glad I’m old
Lily-Rose Depp and pop star The Weeknd star in The Idol, a drama created by Sam Levinson, the American director behind Euphoria
Meanwhile, all teens in cool TV land are watching The Idol (Sky/Now), brought to you by Sam “Euphoria” Levinson, the man who specializes in glossy, dystopian dramas about wasted youth.
I watched it (so you don’t have to) and I can report that it’s mainly Lily-Rose Depp (daughter of Johnny) tossing her hair and twirling like a porn star after too many martinis while The Weeknd ( not actually a weekend, but a pop star from Canada) indulges in deeply inappropriate and rather unpleasant perversity.
Makes you thankful to be old.