THE CHANGE<br>WEDNESDAYS, 10pm, CHANNEL 4 <br>Rating:<br>At last, an intelligent, funny, nuanced, non-patronising piece of TV about the .

Finally, a show that gets it. <br>What it means, how it feels, to be a woman at that stage in life. Seen not so much from a dry medical point of view, but from the emotions and experiences of all involved – husbands, friends and kids included.<br>It’s written by comedian Bridget Christie, who also plays the central character Linda.<br>We open in her and her husband Steve’s garden, at a gathering for her 50th birthday.

Steve (played superbly by Omid Djalili) is doing his party trick of catching sausages in his mouth. <br>Linda’s two sulky teenagers find the whole set-up excruciating, especially their mother’s embarrassing way of swallowing her wine.
Too loud, apparently.<br> Bridget Christie and Jerome Flynn (both pictured) in The Change, a new six-part series which treats the menopause in a refreshingly nuanced way.

While Christie plays the central character Linda, Flynn makes a cameo appearance as the reclusive Pig Man<br> Omid Djalili (pictured) plays Linda’s husband Steve.

The show opens at Linda’s 50th birthday party in the couple’s garden with Steve showcasing his party trick of catching sausages in his mouth<br>It’s these tiny, almost throwaway observations which somehow resonate so massively that make this so funny and clever. <br>Christie has that comedian’s ability to say the unsayable, to ambush the audience in a way that’s both reassuring yet subversive.<br>The menopause is a universal female experience.

Not all women will have children, but we do all, sooner or later, experience the menopause. <br> Society has always behaved as though the menopause didn’t exist  And yet for some reason society has always preferred to behave as though it didn’t really exist. <br>Perhaps because, as Linda outlines so well in an opening rant involving a man at the supermarket checkout and a packet of peas, menopausal women tend to be invisible. <br>The world takes us for granted, a truth exemplified by the diaries Linda keeps of all the banal yet vital tasks she does that no one notices.<br>It’s all there.

The way the menopause creeps up on you with symptoms that at first feel like something else before coalescing into the obvious: how could you have possibly missed it, and yet you did. <br> UK writer Sarah Vine gave Channel 4’s The Change a five-star rating <br>That sense of life passing you by, of nature conspiring against you.

The way you suddenly realise that, as Linda puts it, CARA NAIKIN WEBSITE DI GOOGLE ‘I’ve spent most of my adult life putting other people’s feelings and needs before my own.'<br>So much of the narrative around the menopause is to do with its unpleasant physical side. <br>But what this shows is that it can also be liberating, in that it gives women the ability to no longer care what anyone thinks of them.<br>This Linda demonstrates by embarking on a mid-life menopausal crisis/journey-of-discovery aboard her old motorbike. <br>Along the way are a host of bittersweet adventures and stellar cameos, including Paul Whitehouse, Monica Dolan, Liza Tarbuck, Jim Howick, Tanya Moodie, Jerome Flynn and others. <br>As the sign on my hairdresser’s wall says, real women don’t have hot flushes, they have power surges.

Cheesy, but true.<br>Harrowing… but hilarious<br>THERE SHE GOES<br>BBC iPLAYER <br>Rating:<br> In There She Goes, David Tennant and Jessica Hynes (pictured) play Simon and Emily, parents to the non-verbal and occasionally violent Rosie, played by Miley Locke (pictured centre)<br>Goodness me, David Tennant is a busy man. <br>As well as this he’s over on ITV in Litvinenko, starring with Michael Sheen in both a third series of their lockdown comedy Staged on BBC1 and an upcoming second run of Good Omens on Amazon, plus doing the voiceover for the BBC’s Spy In The Ocean nature series and being involved in some Star Wars thing on Disney+. <br>Oh, and later this year he’ll reprise his role as Doctor Who.

If I didn’t know better I’d say he had alimony to pay. But he appears to be happily married with five children. Whatever he’s on, can I have some?<br>Anyway, this is superb. I’ve had friends and relatives who have faced the reality of life with a seriously disabled child or sibling, and this captures it brilliantly. <br>Tennant and Jessica Hynes are Simon and Emily, parents to Rosie (Miley Locke, left with David and Jessica), a 13-year-old with a chromosomal disorder. <br>She is non-verbal, occasionally violent, unpredictable and a danger to herself and others. Life with her is a relentless round of exhausting challenges, both physical and emotional.<br>The realities of having such a child are portrayed here unflinchingly.

And so is the love they feel for her. <br>The whole thing is handled with a lightness of touch and a warmth that makes it a joy to watch: hilarious and harrowing in equal measure.<br>Makes me glad I’m old<br> Lily-Rose Depp and pop star The Weeknd star in The Idol, a drama created by Sam Levinson, the American director behind Euphoria <br>Meanwhile, over in cool TV land, all the teenagers are watching The Idol (Sky/Now), brought to you by Sam ‘Euphoria’ Levinson, the man who specialises in glossy, dystopian dramas about wasted youth. <br>I’ve watched it (so you don’t have to) and I can report that it’s mostly Lily-Rose Depp (daughter of Johnny) throwing her hair around and gyrating like a porn star after too many martinis while The Weeknd (not an actual weekend, but a pop star from Canada) indulges in deeply inappropriate and rather unpleasant perving. <br>Makes you grateful to be old.<br>