Yahoo News The Change: Is the new Motherland-style show worth a watch?
It's a frightening thought: how long have we spent doing menial household chores? In The Change, Linda (Bridget Christie) knows to the second.
She has recorded exactly how much of her 50 years she has spent spraying counters, taking out the bins or explaining to husband Steve (Omid Djalili) what a cake knife is and where it's kept.
In the new Channel 4 comedy-drama – all six episodes are available to stream – Linda has hit menopause but, naturally, believes she has early onset dementia.
The first episode finds Linda in her garden having a hot flush during her birthday party, as holier-than-thou sister Siobhain (Liza Tarbuck) reminds her how "lucky" she is to have Steve, who's showing off his party trick of grabbing flying sausages with his slack jaw.
Under her breath, Linda replies: "I invited everyone, got all the shopping, cooked it, baked my own cake, chose my own present, wrapped it up and now I'm clearing up." She then pauses, taking stock of the birthday of dreams, and adds: "But yeah, I have had a really nice time."
A GP tells Linda the anxiety, intermittent loss of nouns, osteoporosis and depression are a result of menopause, and plies her with unwanted information about maintaining her sex drive.
Afterwards, Linda decides to dust off her old Triumph motorbike for a road trip to the Forest of Dean.
Like the mum-eat-mum world of Motherland, The Change presents an honest and hilariously authentic account of the everyday struggles of being a modern-day mother.
Moments like when Linda opens a kitchen cupboard to be showered with a waterfall of unmatched Tupperware bottoms and lids are so blissfully realistic as to almost be depressing.
Once freed from the school run and her man-baby husband, the show pivots to what might become of a put-upon mum once she escapes the routine of domesticity.
The Change's premise may seem familiar, but it sets itself apart with a refusal to fall into the clichés of menopause – Sahara-desert hot flushes, incontinence horrors and the rolling tide of brain fog – and its writing on the "invisible labour" of domestic life.
Planning meals, booking doctors' appointments, unloading and reloading the dishwasher – those everyday chores that are easy to forget but, without them, the household starts to fray.
Christie, who stars in and wrote The Change, has said she wanted to emphasise a woman's relationship with herself and her time. "Linda’s chore ledger becomes a metaphor for life and how we live it," she wrote in the Evening Standard.
"It’s an indictment of how we live, and how we treat our loved ones behind closed doors. If we love our mothers and wives, why aren’t we sharing the load?"
In an age where women are made to feel a chill of horror at the prospect of ageing and are encouraged to do everything possible to ward it off, The Change embraces menopause.
As Linda tells Steve, we live in a world "where the Hulk is the best representation of the menopause".
But instead of becoming a raging firecracker, Linda finds that the latter stage of womanhood gives her the freedom to revisit her teenage years.
The explanation for her trip may be slightly exposition-laden, but when your husband needs to be repeatedly told where the cheese grater is perhaps you do have to spell things out.
When Linda arrives in the West Country, the village folk she encounters are drawn as fairly broad bumpkins in desperate need of more This Country nuance.
The standout exception is Tony (Paul Whitehouse) – Tone to friends. He shines from the moment he decrees it "isn't right" Linda is enjoying a pint alone in the pub but can't explain why, except for a ridiculous ramble, which is a total joy to behold.
In a TV climate where we can enjoy The White Lotus's Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge) or Maryland's Becca (Suranne Jones) in messy crisis on screen, The Change's Linda is a deliberately simmering addition to the spectrum of older women.
She establishes herself as a worthwhile role model, arguing that women in midlife should have the luxury of time and that it's something worth fighting for.
That is, as long as she can keep ignoring Steve's texts pleading for precise coordinates for the household towels.
The Change is available to stream on Channel 4.
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