TV Pick of the Week: The Change - review by Yvette Huddleston

The ChangeAll 4, review by Yvette Huddleston
By Yvette Huddleston
Published 10th Jul 2023, 06:00 BST

Award-winning stand-up Bridget Christie writes and stars in this endearingly eccentric six-part sitcom that puts a menopausal woman right at the centre of the action. This really is ground-breaking television that wears its pioneering spirit very lightly but has plenty to say about the invisibility of middle-aged women and society’s attitudes towards them.

Christie plays shopworker Linda, wife to clueless husband Steve (Omid Djalili) and mother to two teenage children who either ignore her or regard her with disdain. On her 50th birthday party, ostensibly ‘organised’ by Steve – “I made all the food and invited everybody” says Linda to her older sister Siobhain (Liza Tarbuck) – she has a bit of an epiphany.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Having kept a meticulous record of the number of hours and minutes of the day that she spends doing menial, invisible, unpaid work for the whole household, Linda decides to claw back some of that time for herself. She gets her old motorbike out of the lock-up it’s been languishing in, dusts off her leathers and heads out on a journey of self-discovery. Apart from having a break from all the drudgery, she has one specific goal in mind – to find the time capsule she hid in a tree in the Forest of Dean when she was 10 years old.

Bridget Christie as Linda in The Change, streaming on All 4. Picture: ©Channel 4.Bridget Christie as Linda in The Change, streaming on All 4. Picture: ©Channel 4.
Bridget Christie as Linda in The Change, streaming on All 4. Picture: ©Channel 4.

Arriving at her destination, she sees an advert for some temporary accommodation which turns out to be a dilapidated old caravan rented out by the so-called ‘Eel sisters’ – Carmel (Monica Dolan) and Agnes (Susan Lynch), also women of a certain age. They run The Eel Café (“proudly serving eels and mash to men since 1850”) inherited from their ‘fayther’ a bit of a local celebrity who, it turns out, died in the caravan Linda is about to take on.

As Linda gets to know the local community – including local radio DJs the Verderer (Jim Howick) and Joy (Tanya Moodie), also a menopausal woman, pub regular Tony (Paul Whitehouse) and rugged forest dweller the Pig Man (Jerome Flynn) – and communes with nature, she reconnects with the adventurous girl she once was.

Christie is outstanding in her sitcom debut, and she gets excellent back up from the strong supporting cast. Her writing, as always, is insightful, cogent and very funny. It all makes for absolutely wonderful, inspiring, eminently bingeable viewing – the good news is that the ending leaves room for a potential second series. Here’s hoping we get to hear more from Linda, and Christie.