The Change's Bridget Christie: 'I see women everywhere with potential but they face horrific violence'

Bridget Christie’s feminist sitcom The Change is back on Channel 4. The first series introduced us to menopausal heroine Linda, who walks out of her home and marriage, jumps on her motorbike, and heads for the Forest of Dean armed with nothing but her chore ledger – showing just how many hours of unpaid and unappreciated domestic labour she’s contributed, and now plans to cash in for a taste of freedom and adventure.

Now, she’s having to fight for her right to remain in the eccentric, eel-obsessed community. In a new interview with Big Issue, stand-up star Christie explains how creating the series has changed her life and career – coming after years of rejection for acting roles.

“I’m a showrunner, what the heck?” says Christie. “From the age of 26 to the age of 50, when I wrote the role of Linda in The Change for myself, I never got a single acting job from an audition.

“And I don’t think my acting could have been that bad. Hundreds of auditions, some bad, others where the casting director said, ‘I’d be surprised if you don’t get it.’

“All the jobs I didn’t get, everything has led to this. It was never about fame or money or mass appeal. I always wanted to create something I would have liked when I was 16. I thought differently about myself after writing it.”

The series builds on Christie’s years as a stand-up.

“I took a show to Edinburgh and talked about feminism for a 10-minute section,” she says. “It got really bad reviews – not for the comedy, for the subject matter. So I dug my heels in and returned with a whole hour – which won the Edinburgh Comedy Award.

“It made me think about how I could write about feminism in an absurd or funny way, which became a delicious puzzle I’m still obsessed by. The privilege of this job is that we have an outlet. Most people just absorb things like poor health, abuse, bullying and don’t have an outlet to talk about it. I’m so grateful for that.

“With women’s equality and feminism there are so many things we’ve got to sort out. The violence against women is so horrific. Andrew Tate and all this stuff. Picking the chore ledger is not a small thing – it’s not violence, but it’s something that needs to be sorted out.

“Part of what I’m doing is writing something relatable and important but also not horrific. Linda writing down her chore ledger, in a way, that’s a ritual as well, isn’t it? This women has kind of lost herself over 20-odd years. Time is passing. She’s been logging all this time and is now taking it back.

“I see women everywhere with all this potential. But if you’re from a certain background, forget about it. Linda in The Change represents so many people.”

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The Change blends feminism, climate activism, folklore and ritual, a bit of Brexit commentary, misogyny, witch trials and a deep exploration of community with a tone unlike any other show on television. And it works. There is no better British comedy on television. And the second series sees Linda sowing the seeds of a revolution in the Forest of Dean.

Christie cites Tales of The Unexpected, Twin Peaks, The Deer Hunter and The Singing Detective among a range of influences.

“The show is like a memory. We used specific lenses and color palettes and widescreen to make it look like it’s not from now, it was important to get actors who look kind of timeless, and everyone in the forest looks and dresses like it could be the ’70s or ’80s,” says Christie.

“All the folklore was in me from three years old. I am the youngest of nine children from a big, Irish, working class family, so all the Catholic stuff, the praying, rituals, costumes and ceremony, was there from childhood. And our parents would also take us to Stonehenge in this big old Bedford van. It instilled a sense of history in us – and the Irish are great at storytelling.”

Another memory from childhood informs her work in a different way. And directly links to the chore ledger she invented for Linda in the show. 

“My dad would get back from the factory and wash all the nappies out in a big bucket. And I always remember my dad saying – and this is also relevant to Linda’s chore ledger and the problem we still have with division of labour in the household – that he was not going to come home and watch the woman he loved doing everything,” recalls Christie.

“It’s such a simple thing. It was nothing to do with feminism – my parents never would have thought like that. But what is equality? It’s respect for your fellow human beings. I think about that a lot. Because I know a lot of left-wing feminist men who do not think like that. It’s all theoretical. It’s all, ‘yes, women should have the vote’, but they’re very happy to have the carpet hoovered around their feet while they read their Marxist theory books…”

The Change is on Channel 4 now. Read Bridget Christie’s full Letter To My Younger Self interview in The Big Issue magazine on April 7

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