Sally Wainwright is the creative genius behind some of the most popular British dramas of the past decade; from the Sarah Lancashire -starring crime thriller Happy Valley , about a Yorkshire-based police sergeant, to the period drama Gentleman Jack , starring Suranne Jones as trailblazing landowner Anne Lister. Now, the 62-year-old writer is taking inspiration from her own life in her new six-part BBC drama, Riot Women, about a group of five menopausal women who form a punk rock band while juggling high-pressure jobs, grown-up children and elderly parents.

Sally – who lives in Oxfordshire and has two sons with the antiquarian sheet music dealer Austin Sherlaw-Johnson, from whom she separated after 29 years in 2019 – learned to play the drums as research for the drama, which stars

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