Happy Valley writer's new drama Hot Flush is about women and ageing punk band

24 August 2023 , 19:55

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Sally Wainwright (Image: BBC)

Never mind the menopause, writer Sally Wainwright has created new drama Hot Flush about a middle-aged punk band.

It follows her crime series Happy Valley and centres on five female friends who create a jokey group and discover they have a lot more to say than imagined. The six-parter shows how they deal with demanding jobs, grown-up kids beset with problems, dependent parents, husbands who let them down and the menopause. And two pals have a long-buried secret that could tear everything apart.

Just like Happy Valley, which starred Sarah Lancashire, Hot Flush is set in Hebden Bridge, West Yorks. At the Edinburgh TV Festival, Wainwright said: “I’ve been wanting to write a series like this for a long time. It’s a celebration of women of a certain age.

"The show is also my own homage to Rock Follies of ’77, and the feisty Little Ladies who woke me up to what I wanted to do with my life when I was 13.” Executive producer Roanna Benn said the show was “about the women who hold up modern Britain, their stories urgently need to be told, and who better than Sally Wainwright to do that”.

Sarah Lancashire in Happy Valley (PA)

In other new BBC dramas, Jenna Coleman plays rookie detective Ember Manning in The Jetty after a fire tears through a holiday home. She must work out how it connects a reporter probing a missing person and a “love” triangle between a man and two underage girls.

Nicola Bulley's children 'cried their eyes out' after being told 'mummy's lost'

In Virdee, Sacha Dhawan plays an officer from Bradford, West Yorks, disowned by his Sikh family for marrying a Muslim. With his personal life in chaos, Det Harry Virdee must hunt down a killer targeting the Asian community. Called Virdee, the drama will be part of the activities leading up to the 2025 Bradford City of Culture.

Nicola Methven