Riot Women sums up everything wrong with the BBC

[IwantToRetire]

Riot Women, by Sally Wainwright, is not the first drama to challenge traditional gender roles in the name of female empowerment, but it really seems to hate men. The six-part series is ostensibly about how five menopausal women come together to make music and inspire each other to rise above the difficulties they face. But another way of seeing it is that it is six hours of prime-time television in which every male character is portrayed as (at best) hopelessly ineffectual and dishonest or (at worst) a psychopathic murderer and rapist, with not much in between.

what it does tell us is that, five years after being appointed as Director General, Tim Davie’s BBC is still, fundamentally, a place that sees such dramas as suitable for mainstream viewing, and that the ideas it promotes are essentially incontestable and inoffensive. Wainwright’s world view is indistinguishable from the BBC’s because they originate from the same set of values.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/riot-women-sums-up-everything-wrong-with-the-bbc/ and at https://archive.is/iEEB9

Well a lot of the story rings true, sadly. I doubt The Spectator would ever be positive about a drama centred on the lives of women.

Pot Kettle…

The Spectator who never met a muslim they liked can hardly talk about balance.
Live by the word….

I was more taken aback at saying this was typical BBC!

I am sure there have been others where women are independtly minded, but most BBC output women are fretting and fussing over a man in one way or another. Or pining about not being with a man.

Apparently he is deputy head of an independent all girls school.

Maybe he is worried they will not want to behave in a lady like and "nice" way and despite their education not think of being independent.

Just really odd article.

i loved this show, and i also agree that the depiction of men was pretty much uniformly horrendous, lol

However, for me it was a deliberate rage bait from Sally Wainwright and totally intended.
Why, in one of the very few dramas that centres middle aged women's experience and rage, should care and balance be shown to the peripheral male characters? so we dont upset the "not all men" crowd? The male characters were all gross, but we all know those men exist. why cant she write them without having to insert a "good man" to make everyone feel a bit better about it??

i thought it was deliberate and it was badass

Example 8379523 of 'when you're used to privilege, equality feels like oppression ' or even a smidge of the same treatment in this case.

I've not even watched it, but that quotation from his article reminds me really strongly of a time in secondary school where we were going to read "Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry" and a load of the boys complained because, for the first chapter, the main character was a girl. They said it was man-hating feminist rubbish, so instead we all got to read Lord of the bloody Flies, in which the ONLY female character is a hunted pig.

Bloody loved Riot Women, it made me cry several times and made be bloody angry re how women are treated. We need more tv like it.
A very odd article.

I stopped taking it as a slightly poor feminine show as soon as a man took a female part. Of course that begs the question of what his "female" experience to be in the band was, which dilutes the whole purpose of the show.
Tokenism once again with little thought to the impact.

Wow that is really shocking.

Qanta Ahmed, Munira Mirza and Sajid Javid have all written for the Spectator

I disagree with that, Miranda (Macy Seelochan) was just there, pulled into the band on the last minute, and not shoe horned in. It was a very small character part. Trans people exist. Yes mumsnet might not like it, but as other threads say there are trans people in the area it was set.

You can chose to be offended by it, and you can chose to complain - but Mirandas involvement did not in my view dilute the "whole purpose", unless you want to complain about the ages as some of the other women in the group were not menopausal....? Or are you picking and choosing what to be annoyed about?

David James needs to check his privilege. There’s plenty of tv programs which centre men and here is throwing his toys out the pram because one tv program centres women. If he doesn’t like it, don’t watch it. I don’t like 95% of what’s on the tv but I get that other people do.

I think for me the issue with that was, the show was so resolute in portraying all male characters as on a spectrum from mildly appalling to psychopathic, it seemed odd to be quite so emphatic that a trans identity not only erases that but actually renders that character one of the few who actually never displayed any temper, any unreasonableness, or any motivation other than the desire to help and be supportive.

Of course, if I were coming at this from a different angle, I might object to the idea that trans characters have to portrayed as more/better-than others in order to earn their right to exist, or some such. I'm not coming at it from there, but I did find it a bit after-school-ideology-special vibes that we had to have that particular minor plot line which jarred so profoundly with a narrative in which, otherwise, all adult children are selfish and self-involved, and all males are bastards.

Well it's true that the male characters were entirely caricatures of the worst males.
Not unlike many, many other programs where the women are the worst stereotypes.
I loved it. Was slightly irked by "Miranda" but as others said it was a tiny insignificant part.

Riot Women, brilliant.
The Spectator, a pile of shit.

Haven’t seen it, but just from reading the thread - surely all the male characters were not negatively portrayed, if there was a positively drawn transwoman?

They pretty much were, actually. I'm not objecting to that if that's the point SW was making, but yeah, I can only think of one man-identifying-as-such who wasn't really quite a full-on shit

My point was that the transwoman is a male character

Not seen it so this is based on PPs' comments. But it sounds like the inclusion of the trans character (a male, as they virtually always are) may be more to do with creating a vague impression of being Right On than any genuine interest in trans people, which seems to be how most TV representations of trans people work. But also said trans person (as they usually do) ends up being weirdly flawless, which comes across as propagandistic.

I wasn't going to watch it on principle because of the cross dressing man. Is it worth watching?

I think the drayman character was actually pretty badly treated by the pub landlady - her character was a bit pig headed and she did come to realise it. The son character was flawed…. But there was a bit of a background AND he ended up going through quite a bit. And I can think of several men in their 20s who seem to find themselves closer to their friends and their in-laws than to their actual parents. Usually because it’s just easy and they’re lazy.
The scene that he first mentioned - they were mocking the man over what he’d suggested, not what they’d like to do. He just didn’t bother to watch properly.

https://bylinetimes.com/2021/11/30/new-study-highlights-anti-muslim-bigotry-of-the-spectator-magazine/

Ah, the Byline Times! It's been a while since anyone got taken in by that rag on here!

I thoroughly enjoyed it. Great scene where one character complains about how a policeman has groped a colleague (implies it’s male). Cue shock and horror. Let’s slip it’s actually a woman who’s been groped, and it all gets less serious. Sadly v realistic.

ive recommended it to lots of friends.

The Spectator thinks the BBC has a poor view of men?

The magazine that happily published a review of a lecture given by a female historian, which culminated in the reviewer going to visit a sex worker because the lecturer’s hair turned him on?

That Spectator?