Don’t watch the second series of Bridget Christie’s The Change without watching the first – and not just because you’ll be missing out on three delightfully distinctive hours of television. For tonight’s run starts midway though the cliffhanger scene that ended the first season two years ago – plunging new viewers straight into the heart of things, with no induction.
The abbreviated backstory is that with the onset of menopause, the comedian’s character, Linda, hit a midlife crisis that was a long time brewing. Fed up will all the invisible labour she was doing for husband Steve (a perfectly clueless Omid Djalili) and teenage kids, she decided to cash in the 3.5 million minutes of domestic drudgery that she had meticulously logged in her ledger and took herself off to the Forest of Dean on her vintage motorbike.
There, among the isolated community of quirky characters and under the powerful primal influence of nature, she started to ‘find herself’ – for want of a less wanky word – and establish her own personality, not merely as someone’s wife or mother. Accepted by the forest community – well, most of them – she was crowned Eel Queen. Until Steve showed up and blew her cover…
That’s where we pick up the story, with Linda now facing a modern ‘witch-trial’ from the locals to decide whether she should be allowed to stay. After hearing her story the vote is split, amusingly, 48 per cent to 52 (and entirely on gender lines) in favour of remain, and Linda returns to the forest with a new sense of purpose.
Episode one has some heavy narrative lifting to do to get this over, and can be more dramatic that comedic (occasionally even a wee bit speechifying), but it sets the scene for all the town’s womenfolk to start their own chore logs (a word that can’t find its way through Linda’s hormonal brain fog, and she gets muddled with it being something to do with trees). In scenes that have shades of Life Of Brian, the newcomer becomes something of a reluctant feminist messiah (Ms-siah?), plagued by locals seeking advice.
While scenes like this are funny, and there are plenty of sly, underplayed lines in the script, the main delight with The Change is the unique sense of place it evokes. With the aid of co-director Mackenzie Crook – whose Detectorists similarly celebrated simple rural peculiarities – Christie creates an almost otherworldly community, full of idiosyncratic people but always painted with affection. Even the awful ones.
Prime among them is Jim Howick’s The Verderer, superficially an unappealing men’s rights campaigner and Linda’s nemesis, is more pathetic than toxic, a lost soul confused by society’s change.
Pub scenes with Paul Whitehouse’s easily-led grouch Tony, shoehorn in some mini feminist arguments – whether women can be funny in the first episode – though Whitehouse’s gently bewildered charm and Christie’s patient script, seeking understanding more than condemnation, goes a long way to avoid preachiness.
And we are involved with them all, even the utterly bizarre Eel Sisters, with Laura Checkley joining as a new sibling Theresa, straight out of prison . And just when you might think the pace of the piece is settled, in stumbles Linda’s sister Siobhain, played by Lisa Tarbuck, threatening to be an agent of chaos derailing Linda’s new bucolic life. And you’ll want to stay tuned to know exactly how, for by this point you’ll be totally immersed in this strangely charming place.
• The Change starts with a double episode on Channel 4 at 10pm tonight
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