Omid Djalili, Liza Tarbuck, Paul Whitehouse and more...

Channel 4 has announced the cast of Bridget Christie’s upcoming midlife crisis comedy, The Change.

Monica Dolan, Ashley McGuire, Tanya Moodie, Liza Tarbuck, Omid Djalili, Jerome Flynn, Jim Howick and Paul Whitehouse all have roles in the six-part series, which has been described as ‘Shirley Valentine meets Deliverance. With pigs’.

Filming has just begun on the show which stars Christie as Linda, a 50-year-old working-class married mother of two who is convinced she’s got early onset dementia after forgetting what a shoe is called. But her GP tells her it is, in fact, the menopause.

Feeling invigorated and empowered by this information, Linda decides to claw back some of the time she’s spent doing ‘invisible work’ over the years and do something for herself for a change.  Dusting off her old Triumph motorbike, she heads to the Forest of Dean in an attempt to reconnect with the person that she used to be.

The first people she meets in the Forest of Dean are the eccentric,  straight-talking Eel Sisters, Bernadette, played by This Is Going To Hurt Ashley McGuire, and Carmel played by A Very English Scandal star Monica Dolan. Also in the neighbourhood is Joy (Moytherland’s Tanya Moodie), a DJ at the local radio station, folklore specialist and outspoken feminist.

Liza Tarbuck plays Siobhain, Linda’s older, domineering sister, while Ghosts star Jim Howick plays The Verderer, an angry, intolerant and outspoken man; also a DJ.

Jerome Flynn plays the Pig Man, a reclusive figure who lives a solitary life with only the wild boar for company.

Linda also crosses paths with Tony (played by Paul Whitehouse), a regular in the local pub and a  man of simple pleasures, but outdated, often problematic points of view.

Linda’s husband of 25 years, Steve, is played by comic Omid Djalili,. He loves Linda but rarely lifts a finger with the household chores and has taken her for granted, so when she leaves him home alone with the kids, he’s finally forced to work out how to use the washing machine.

Other cast in the series include Richard Durden playing Dr Spence, a kindly but old-fashioned doctor who inadvertently triggers Linda’s journey of self-discovery and Amanda Lawrence as Janet Trustgrove a local nervy town councillor. Finally,  Sonny Charlton plays Ryan, The Verderer’s sister’s non-binary child who is counting down to the day when they can escape the town.

Made by: Expectation
Written by: Bridget Christie
Executive producers: Bridget Christie, Nerys Evans and Morwenna Gordon
Produced by: Lisa Mitchell
Directed by:  Al Campbell
Commissioned for Channel 4 by:  Fiona McDermott, former head of comedy and Laura Riseam, commissioning editor for comedy.

Published: 5 Jul 2022