Another thing that came to my attention thanks to the Guardian's best of 2023 list was Bridget Christie's sitcom, "The Change". I enjoyed it so much that I watched all six episodes in a single sitting.
Following her 50th birthday, Linda (Bridget Christie) is told that she's undergoing the menopause. Already questioning her lot in life, as a mother and wife, the diagnosis is the final kick she needs to leave the family for a while and take some time for herself. She heads to the Forest of Dean, where she spent some time as a child, looking to locate a box of personal items she hid in a tree decades earlier. Her husband Steve (Omid Djalili) struggles without the myriad of unpaid jobs that Linda did around the house.
There are lots of elements to "The Change". Of course, there is a central story about the household work that often still falls to the women in a family and how under investigated and report the facts about the menopause are, purely because it doesn't affect men. There's also an English heritage aspect, similar to something like "The Detectorists" with a romantic take on the pagan traditions that have faded from use. None of these plots feel like a lecture though, and all three are interrogated by the characters involved, whilst remaining laugh out loud funny. It's never an attack on men, and if often quite sympathetic of characters even if, like Jim Howick's right wing reactionary radio host, they don't really deserve it.
There are plenty of great characters but for me, the MVP is Liza Tarbuck - who is gloriously funny and foul mouthed as Linda's sister Siobhain.
It ends right at the point that it feels like it's about to unravel, so I'm not convinced that a second season is really required, but I'd love to see more of Bridget Christie both on screen and writing.