We Are Lady Parts

Nida Manzoor's We Are Lady Parts began as a fourteen-minute Channel 4 pilot in 2018 before being commissioned as a full series co-produced with Peacock. Series 1 premiered on Channel 4 and Peacock in May 2021; Series 2 followed in 2024. Manzoor writes and directs every episode — a creative concentration unusual for a British comedy series — and the show represents her feature-length debut in all but name, having previously worked on Doctor Who (2022).

Anjana Vasan leads the ensemble as Amina, a microbiology PhD student pressed into service as the guitarist for Lady Parts, an all-Muslim, all-female British punk band of varying commitment and consistent chaos. Sarah Kameela Impey plays the band's magnetic, mercurial frontwoman Saira. The series draws on the full vocabulary of the music biopic — montage, backstage drama, the tension between artistic ambition and commercial reality — but filters it through the specific textures of British-Muslim identity in London, with a formal inventiveness that includes animated sequences and direct address. The soundtrack is original, written for the series, and genuinely good.

Series 1 achieved a perfect 100% on Rotten Tomatoes from 48 critics. Manzoor won the BAFTA for Best Writer: Comedy in 2022, with the show taking two further BAFTA craft awards and two Peabody Awards. Critics noted that the series managed something rare: a comedy that is genuinely funny about religion, identity, and subcultural belonging without reducing any of them to a punchline.