© C4 Bridget Christie makes a menopausal road-trip comedy
Six-part series for Channel 4
Bridget Christie is making a Channel 4 comedy-drama about a menopausal woman having an existential crisis.
The Change is described as ‘Shirley Valentine meets Deliverance. With pigs’, and will be shot near her childhood home in Gloucestershire.
In the six-part series she will play Linda, a 50-year-old, working-class, married mother-of-two who dusts off her old Triumph motorbike and heads into The Forest of Dean to combat a mid-life crisis.
Along the way she meets an array of eccentric locals, including the infamous Eel Sisters, an angry local radio presenter and a mysterious man who lives in the woods with the wild boar.
Christie is also a 50-year-old married mother-of-two from working-class roots who has recently revived her interest in biking.
She said: 'I’ve got a Channel 4 series??? Are you joking? I’m sorry I don’t know anything about this. Unless I’ve forgotten? I am having terrible trouble remembering things at the moment because of the menopause. What’s it about?'
And Fiona McDermott, head of comedy at Channel 4, said: 'Bridget pitched the show with the tag line "Shirley Valentine meets Deliverance. With Pigs". She had us at pigs.'
She added that the show 'so brilliantly tackles big themes – feminism, health, identity, class and the natural world – but wraps them up with Bridget’s signature charm, curiosity and comic expertise. It’s a timely show from a comic at the height of her powers.'
The show is being made by production company Expectation, whose executive producer Morwenna Gordon, added: 'We couldn't be more excited to work with Bridget on channelling her brilliant comic voice into a narrative comedy. She's putting the menopause at the heart of the story, against the beautiful, magical and at times unsettling backdrop of The Forest of Dean.'
Christie's latest stand-up show, Who Am I?, also revovles around the menopause and continues on April 26 at the Leicester Square Theatre in London.
Published: 14 Mar 2022
