How about entertainment we *can*stomach?!

[moofolk]

Inspired by the other thread of feminism ruining TV.

Let's compile some good stuff.

Not too many men, lots of strong female characters, hopefully some lesbians, definitely not loads of women being raped and murdered for male titillation.

I watched The Women with Meg Ryan and Annette Benning recently. It's bubblegum and hardly a feminist manifesto. It has a very strong female cast including Bette Midler and Carrie Fisher and crucially there are no men in it at all.

What have you got?

As a teen, loved House of Elliot!

Fleabag, of course.

Mrs Maisel is brilliant. I also love 30 Rock and Parks and Recreation - I'm sure they're problematic in their own ways but to me they all have funny, strong, non-perfect female leads.

Can I recommend The Walking Dead for consistently passing the Bechdel with flying colours and being really good at women of colour and kick ass women and just occasionally making me spill my tea when I realise I am watching three main characters in a 20 minute scene and they are all women and they haven't mentioned men once (except undead ones) and two are BAME and one is a lesbian and I'm not dreaming.

It's a shame we have to wait for the zombie plague for that to happen but at least there is a light at the end of that particular tunnel.

And I am really disappointed by this series of Good Girls because I really liked it and the scene where they have to spell out what they are talking about because the kids are there ('she K.I.L.L.E.D. him? What with? .... A S.W.O.R.D?') was a classic. But no to the puberty blockers and the T. Just no.

Motherland
Night Night
Smack The Pony
Got a real soft sort for Prime Suspect

Blockbuster type film Widows

I loved Secret Life of Bees that PP mentioned.

@Frankiegoes

The Walking Dead has some good female characters and no sexual assault or rape.

Thank fuck because the comic does and the writer’s response when criticised for it is what stopped me reading it.

Some of those reality TV athletes Real Marigold Hotel shows were good. Miriam Margoyles pulls no punches.

Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads.

Thora Hird in A Cream Cracker Under The Settee gives such an excellent performance.

Ha, not athletes! Typo sorry. Reality TV shows.

Line of Duty has a trafficked women plot line. In the newer Battlestar Galactica they made Starbuck female...

Dead To Me - about a friendship between 2 women Dh and I enjoyed it

Good Girls - tails off abit but first season good - group of mums become armed robbers

I've just ordered the DVD boxset of Tenko, thanks!

I've just started Love Life on i-player. Anna Kendricks stars, female director and writer, very promising - seems to be about the search for love and kissing a fair few frogs en route - very woman centred so far.

Course it's 2020 so she'll probably be growing a beard and calling herself Billy by episode 6 but we travel in hope...

A bit niche, but there was a great Korean drama called WWW: Search last year which absolutely centred its 3 main female characters, who worked in senior roles at rival search engines. There were male characters and interesting nuanced relationships, but to the side. It is still available with subtitles on Viki (subscription streaming service) and on various pirate sites.

In general, many Korean dramas have strong, supportive female friendship and kinship groups, but more often secondary to the main plot.

Another vote for Enola Holmes and I also enjoyed the Michelle Obama & Ruth Bade Ginsberg biopics on Netflix.

Same here, @EvenSupposing, it seems fun!

I only have Netflix so my range is quite limited but: I thought Jessica Jones was mostly well done, also Dead to Me is great, loved Grace and Frankie (last season not as good) and Canadian sitcom Workin Moms is hilarious as well as quite clever.

I do really, really enjoy GLOW but I absolutely hate the over-arcing plot about Ruth and Sam being attracted to each other. Sam was downright abusive in his treatment of Ruth at the start of the series. I'd be fine with a storyline showing them developing an admiration of each other as colleagues but any romance between them would be horrendous. Their history, the unequal power dynamic and the age difference (19 years between the actors) would make for a deeply unhealthy relationship.

And last season piled on the older man-younger woman angle by getting Debbie involved with JJ/Tex. I loved Toby Huss as Boz in Halt and Catch Fire (where is his love interest is 5 years younger and his close connection to the younger woman Cameron never once crosses the line into anything inappropriate) but I really, really didn't want to see him in a relationship with a 20 years younger Betty Gilpin. In season 1 we also had Rhonda and Sam in a relationship despite their 25 year age difference.

Glow is a great show in a lot of ways but constantly having these beautiful, athletic younger women in relationships with much older, more powerful men isn't great. Even when the relationships don't end well, I never get the impression that it's because the age difference/power dynamic was maybe a bit messed up. These are relatively powerful older men who are using their wealth/power to attract beautiful young women they would otherwise have no hope of attracting. And that doesn't seem to be a clear part of the story being told.

South Korean dramas seem a weird mix of lots of women of different ages interacting with women, eg on work, study, career, ‘personal development’, friendship and family matters; melodrama; and super conservative on some stuff, eg sex and booze!

Also interesting for the locations, foods etc!

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.

Side note, but Keanu Reeves’ daughter in the new Bill and Ted is quite androgynous looking and clearly not buying into a “feminine” look but it’s never mentioned, I liked that.

Stumptown is enjoyable bollocks with Cobie Smulders in the lead role. She is totally flawed and awesome.

No Offence has awesome female lead characters.

Agree with Motherland, Mrs Maisel and Mrs America.

scrappydappydoooooo
agree with you 100pc on ruth and sam in GLOW. Was going to say in my earlier post this is the one downside with the show. I love it apart from that though

I've been watching Chicago PD - so same stable as Law & Order and Chicago Med and Fire. There are some very strong female characters- not 50/50 but probably 30%. They are equal characters and not props.... but they also do completely unrealistic things like run as fast or faster than the men. They fight and punch and take down male criminals - I keep thinking hang on mate, no way, you're half his size! I can see it's a massive nod to equality but it doesn't feel realistic.

they also do completely unrealistic things like run as fast or faster than the men

That makes me think, have we mentioned Cormoran Strike? In which the woman can definitely run faster than the man - but realistically.

ErrolTheDragon and Robin also gets to drive! How often does the woman get to drive?

Well, it might sound a bit odd being more at the daytime drama level, but I really really enjoyed watching The Royal, and particularly in terms of it's female characters. I think in part because there was no attempt to make them "strong" or to try and fulfils some agenda in terms of addressing issues - it was a straightforward attempt to tell the stories of people who lived at the time. The women represented a lot of different personalities and political views too, without judging them whatever they were like.

My favourite Canadian series is still, after many years, North of 60, which rather dates me. It has some interesting female roles as well - the lead female who is probably the lead character overall, by season three, is not always likeable but I think is interesting and has a lot of admirable qualities. (If anyone wants to look this up, bear in mind that season one is rather different than the subsequent seasons, they changed direction a bit making it more of a serious drama, and, I suspect, had more money.) In some ways it can seem dated, the acting style for example, and certain episodes like the one on AIDS, but it has a lot of integrity from a story-writing perspective.