The Change: Trailer, certificate and where to watch
Bridget Christie writes and stars in this sharply written menopause comedy
Year: 2023
Certificate: 15
When Bridget Christie's self-penned dark comedy arrived in 2023, it was billed as a 'menopause comedy', the stage of life less frequently referred to as 'the change'. For Linda, a woefully underappreciated wife and mother, menopause triggered a massive change in her outlook as she up and left, off on her motorcycle to find herself.
What she found was a rural community of misfits. They included Jerome Flynn's soft-spoken woodsman, Paul Whitehouse's sweetly un-PC barfly and the weirdly terrifying Eel sisters (Monica Dolan and Susan Lynch). Whatever change Linda might have been going through, in the first series she became part of something bigger, with way more potential than the domestic setting she had fled.
In the second series, Linda is lying low while a sexual revolution bubbles in the Forest of Dean. Word of her ledger has got out - the record she kept of the time it took to complete banal domestic tasks, from laundry to clearing crumbs from the toaster - and like her, the women of the village want that time back. The show develops beyond Linda's menopause story so that there's room for the characters surrounding Linda to grow as they all face change in their own unique ways. Powered by Christie's wry and sharp observations on men and women today, feminism has never been so funny. (Two series)
