Channel 4 has announced the commission of The Change, a six-part comedy-drama series.
The series has been created, written by, and stars multi-award-winning stand-up comedian, actor and writer, Bridget Christie.
Fiona McDermott, Head of Comedy at Channel 4:
“Bridget pitched the show with the tag line ‘Shirley Valentine meets Deliverance. With Pigs’. She had us at pigs. We’re so thrilled to be working with her and Expectation and be able to hero a woman like Linda at the centre of a show that 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.”
Linda – played by Christie – is a 50-year-old working-class married mother of two, is having an existential crisis. Who is she? What is she? Is this it? Convinced she’s got early onset dementia after forgetting what a shoe is called, Linda’s GP informs her it is, in fact, 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 (not all 3.5 million minutes, just 131,500 of them) to do something for herself… for a change.
Dusting off her old Triumph motorbike that she hasn’t ridden in 30 years, Linda sets off alone to the spectacular wilderness of The Forest of Dean – in search of an identity, a purpose, and tree she climbed as a child. 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. What could possibly go wrong?
Creator Bridget Christie:
“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?”
