Binge-r #248: We Are Lady Parts + Sophie: A Murder in West Cork
Guitar Heroes: Sarah Kameela Impey (Saira) and Anjana Vasan (Amina) in We Are Lady Parts
WE ARE LADY PARTS S1
Streaming Service: Stan
Availability: All six episodes now streaming
With plenty of feedback – both amplified and cultural – this loudly irreverent British comedy puts a backbeat behind representation as a rowdy London punk band composed of young Muslim women tries to hook itself a lead guitarist. Amina (Anjana Vasan) has simple goals: finish her microbiology PhD and sort an arranged marriage to a handsome, respectable young Muslim man. More conservative than her parents, but prone to flights of fantasy that the storytelling happily runs with (puppets ahoy), Amina’s difficult search gets a break when the talented acoustic guitarist agrees to go electric and play with the raucous trio Lady Parts in a battle of the bands in exchange for a date with Ahsan (Zaqi Ismail), the dreamy but under duress brother of the group’s drummer, Ayesha (Juliette Motamed). More songs are composed than wedding invitations.
Written and directed by Nida Manzoor (Doctor Who), We Are Lady Parts is a sweetly silly paean to the swirl of London’s multi-layered Muslim communities. There is comic exaggeration and embarrassing scenarios – Amina struggles to perform publicly without vomiting – but there’s also a very real sense of how these second generation women live between traditional, current, and musical expectations. The plot winds in the stories of Ayesha, unrepentant vocalist Saira (Sarah Kamella Impey), bassist and mother Bisma (Faith Omole), and burqa-wearing manager Momtaz (Lucie Shorthouse), sitting somewhere between Michaela Coel’s Chewing Gum [full review here] and Girls5eva [full review here]. “She’s gagging for a husband,” Ayesha says of Amina, and eventually everyone’s needs come into play.
With bangers such as Nobody’s Gonna Honour Kill My Sister But Me, Lady Parts make a convincing racket and the show honours the band on the make archetypes with irrepressible bonding and bad gigs. As a director Manzoor throws a great deal into the mix for editing, and if the feel is a touch chaotic then it’s a fitting reflection of the storyline. Vasan is a geeky and likeable lead, complete with a voiceover that sounds as if she’s narrating a very modern Jane Austen novel. “Think Handmaid’s Tale meets Rugrats,” Bisma says by way of describing her comic book series, and We Are Lady Parts is an equally unlikely – but enjoyable – mash-up. The songs last for two minutes, the episodes 25 minutes. Both are at the right length.
A Life Lost: Sophie Toscan du Plantier in Sophie: A Murder in West Cork
SOPHIE: A MURDER IN WEST CORK (Netflix, all three episodes now streaming): There are many ill-judged and even exploitative true crime documentaries on Netflix. This is not one of them. Adapted from the acclaimed podcast West Cork – Audible’s most listened to series of all time – Sophie: A Murder in West Cork is a sombre, multi-faceted examination of the 1996 murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier, a French documentary film producer found outside her holiday home near the remote town of Schull on Ireland’s southern coast. “It’s like an electric shock,” recalls her son, Pierre-Louis, who was 15-years-old at the time that his childhood irrevocably ended, and the woman at the centre of a case that obsessed both France and Ireland is never lost or put aside. Director John Dower (My Scientology Movie) captures Sophie’s life, her family’s endurance, and the eclectic community that was shocked by a killing in their midst and the possible ramifications. Recreations are kept to a minimum, while testimony from investigators, locals and even suspects open up an increasingly complex case that unfolded without the clarity of physical evidence.
NEWLY ADDED MOVIES
New on Netflix: Ron Howard’s Backdraft (1991, 137 minutes) is the kind of movie Hollywood doesn’t make anymore: a star-laden drama – with Kurt Russell, Billy Baldwin, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Robert De Niro – about feuding brothers on a Chicago fire crew; Sausage Party (2016, 88 minutes) is a raunchily funny send-up of consumerism and faith told through the animated supermarket adventures of a sausage named Frank (Seth Rogen).
New on Stan: With an assist from Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez continued his exploitation film fervour with Planet Terror (2007, 92 minutes), a zombie action film starring Rose McGowan, Bruce Willis, and Josh Brolin; Gifted (2017, 102 minutes) is a middling child custody drama that allows Chris Evan to step aside from superhero territory to play an uncle trying to hold onto his academically advanced niece after his mother swoops in.
New on SBS on Demand: Paul Rudd perfectly evokes the title role in Our Idiot Brother (2011, 87 minutes), a knotty family comedy about a trio of sisters – played by Elizabeth Banks, Zooey Deschanel, and Emily Mortimer – whose complex but incomplete lives are put into a new perspective by the unintentional impact of their bumbling sibling.
>> Missed last week’s BINGE-R? Click here to read about SBS snagging the masterful Halt and Catch Fire and Apple TV+’s Rose Byrne black comedy Physical.
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