Out of office email saying "zero fucks given"

Continuing my trip up Empire's top 20 TV shows of 2024

#18 :  We Are Lady Parts

Nida Manzoor’s riotous comedy returned this year, and we caught up with Muslim punk band Lady Parts after their successful gig in the previous season finale. Frontwoman Saira (Sarah Kameela Impey), bassist Bisma (Faith Omole), drummer and eyeliner extraordinaire Ayesha (Juliette Motamed) and formerly reluctant, Don McLean-loving guitarist Amina (Anjana Vasan) are back together and writing new songs – including ‘Villain Era’, inspired by Amina’s new no-nonsense attitude at work. They’re touring and ready to record an album, but have already spawned such a following that a rival band of super-fans, Second Wife, is set to put everything they’ve worked for in jeopardy, and label execs are sniffing around, threatening to break the gang apart. The second season is every bit as glorious as the first, the band’s anarchic spirit expressed through Manzoor’s continued playfulness with form, genre, and magical realism, as well as the objectively kick-ass songs and performances. Long live Lady Parts!

I watched the first season and enjoyed it, so meant to catch up with this second season - but there's was always something else to watch so it never happened. Until now - I'm looking forward to it.

Yeah, it's pretty similar to the first season. It's possibly not quite as amusing, but considering it features the trials and tribulations of a bunch of Muslim women who experience issues which aren't exactly relatable to me (being evicted from your home, kissing a white guy, not wearing a headscarf, coming out to your parents), it hits home surprisingly hard. 

It's really well written with a theme of expectations on women as friends, mothers, partners, colleagues, daughters - pretty much everything, in fact, running throughout the season with each member of the group experiencing their own trials and tribulations. Interestingly, like season 1, episode 5 goes surprisingly heavy - and surprisingly quickly, with it coming out of nowhere and also being a bit confusing (but nicely so and the internet explained it all to me). And then episode 6 goes a bit emotional to give us a big happy ending - it's also nice that they had a opportunity to make a male character a bit of a sleazy villain but instead made him a good guy.

All the main characters Amina (Anjana Vasan), Saira (Sarah Kameela Impey), Ayesha (Juliette Motamed), Bisma (Faith Omole) and Momtaz (Lucie Shorthouse) are all back, with Amina taking more of a back seat than she did in the previous season giving everyone else more of a chance to shine. 

This season also features possibly the most Nobel prize winning guest appearance we're going to see this year with Malala Yousafzai (you probably just know her as Malala) appearing during a country number sitting on a horse in Cowboy Carter style in the clever and amusing "Malala Made Me Do It" number. The rest of the original numbers are well done and we also get some interesting cover versions - Britney's "Oops - I Did It Again" and The Animals "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" are worked in to the plot really well.

I really enjoyed this - it's all surprisingly relatable for what is most definitely not aimed at me. I remember season 1 having more laughs than this season, but it was still amusing enough with characters I liked spending time with - and start with season 1 (both are on Channel 4 On Demand) if you've not seen it and you think you fancy it.

#19 - Ridiculous but entertaining
#17 - Much better than I was expecting

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I'm not wishing I was back in the USA, coz I come from Morecambe and the skies are grey

Image
Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 15/11/24 : Earth To Grace - Massive Wagons I will listen to the new entry at #1, but there's absolutely NO WAY I'm writing a whole entry on it - so instead we have this which I know absolutely nothing about. But it has to be better than the abomination at #1. Well, it's something you don't hear too much of these days - I guess "hard rock" is probably as good a description as any. It’s not going to win any awards for musical complexity but it’s quite catchy - I was r eminded of Gary Moore in his heavier days that teenage me used to like. It also certainly doesn't take itself too seriously - "Free And Easy" tells us "I don't shoot guns, it's not healthy - I drive a Ford C-Max I got off my dad and it's filthy" and "Rabbit Hole" offers up an amusingly sceptical take on conspiracy theories and then abruptly ends "Auf wiedersehen, adios - this song fucking ...
Read more

I saw your mum - she forgot that I existed

Image
Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 22/12/23 :  Stick Season - Noah Kahan Well, this week surprises us on a couple of fronts.  Firstly, and probably the least expected, this is possibly the album I've heard most this year - because obviously I'm a massive Noah fan. Well, it might not surprise you to hear it's not me but my delightful daughter - but you might be surprised to hear just how much my youngest absolutely LOVES Noah, particularly given his folkiness.  She's got tickets to see him next year and (excluding festivals) they're the most expensive gig tickets I've ever bought.  But despite having heard the album loads, I've never actually listened to it, so I'm interested to see what I make of it on a one-on-one basis. You know what - the headline is that, having actually listened to it I can report that, at least in places, I liked this way more than I previously did.  I listened to it over headphones for the first time and t...
Read more

Time is the fruit of patience

Image
Continuing my trip back through the 1990 album charts. 27/05/90 : Passion And Warfare : Steve Vai I know that Steve Vai is a highly respected guitarist, but I've got no more clue about him than that.  I also don't have a great history with albums from highly respected guitarists, so I'd have to say my confidence isn't sky high going in to this one (and nothing would have convinced me to buy it - 7/32). Ohmigod, this is rubbish.  The guitar playing is indeed of a very high quality, but man cannot live on guitar playing alone and everything else about it is just pretentious bombast.  "The Audience Is Listening" deserves a specific mention for being particularly rubbish, with a teacher introducing "young Steve Vai" to the class to play a lovely tune and then providing an increasingly histrionic running commentary on how much she doesn't like it.  I can imagine he's very impressive live, but such virtuosity often doesn't translate onto an alb...
Read more