’m sufficiently old that I feel like the window for talking about We Are Lady Parts is over, what with the series coming out in May of 2021 and our engagement with it taking place in early September.
I’m old because I’m trapped in a cultural paradigm where immediacy is a primary virtue when recommending narratives—the same paradigm where books have a shelf-life of three to four weeks, television shows get consumed in scheduled blocks and paid for by advertising, and films exist to be shown on the big screen or pulled off the limited shelf-space of your local blockbuster.
Talk about a film, a book, or a television show four months down the line in that kind of environment, and the moment is already over. You wait for re-runs or the DVD release that might never happen, scour second-hand bookstores or badger your library to order in a copy.
But this is the streaming age; the binge watch age; the ebook age. Online stores don’t have the limitations of physical shelf space, and they’re free to stock vast back lists if you’re eager to engage. A penchant for addressing things while they’re new is an atavism of an earlier age, and while we still get the occasional blockbuster that goes strong right out of the blocks, we mostly come to new works in our own time.
We lose some things with that transition: the sense of cultural conversation is more difficult to find, and you can no longer wade into a discussion of Game of Thrones or Big Brother with any real confidence that people understand what you’re saying.
But the gains are incredible, and open up an array of film, TV, and fiction that wouldn’t be feasible in a sales environment characterised by limited shelf space and short sales windows.
And We Are Lady Parts—a six-episode TV comedy about an all-female Muslim punk band in London—is an absolute cracker of a TV show that quietly picking up viewers ever week (this week, it’s shown up in two newsletters from writers I follow, both of whom are basically begging for people to watch it so they can talk bout it).
The show is smart, well-acted, funny, and packed to the gills with catch punk/riot grrl songs that will have you searching for the soundtrack within minutes of watching it. The kind of show that’s built for an era where slow discovery and conversations have replaced the gospel of immediate hype.
It’s easily the best thing I’ve watched all year, and will probably remain so for other people regardless of whether they watch it in 2021, 2025, or 2031.
The window for talking about works you love is open, and it will not close just because a few weeks have gone by.
