'Riot Women's First Images Are Here To Kick Your Arse

The BBC and BritBox have released the first-look pictures of the highly-anticipated 2025 series Riot Women. The brand-new drama, initially titled Hot Flush*, hails from Sally Wainwright (Last Tango in Halifax) and will be her latest entry into what has become something of a history-making career. Set and filmed in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, near where Wainwright was raised, the six-part series is a BBC co-commission with BritBox, guaranteeing the series will have an American streaming home when it debuts. Along with the first images, the series also firmed up the synopsis and confirmed the show's entire cast.

(*The term "Hot Flush" is the Britishism for "Hot Flash," the famous symptom of menopause experienced by many women in their late 40s and early 50s. One assumes that this is a co-production with BritBox with plans to release in the U.S. and Canada was the reason for changing the title to something both sides of the pond would instantly recognize, a reference to the 1990s era Riot Grrrl punk scene.)

Sally Wainwright is not a household name in America, but anyone who has enjoyed U.K. television in the last decade or so will know Wainwright's work. Her first original series, At Home with the Braithwaites, debuted in 2000; since then, she's been the driving force behind such series as Sparkhouse (a Wuthering Heights retelling). She didn't become famous in the U.K. until 2011/2012 when she released the one-two punch of the hit police procedural Scott & Bailey and the hit family drama Last Tango, followed by Happy Valley, which literally changed how police procedurals were viewed on TV. Since then, she's used her genius grant to create Gentleman Jack for HBO and Renegade Nell for Disney+, the latter being her first foray into what we call in the States "family-friendly programming."