Joanna Scanlan

BBC and BritBox release first-look images for Riot Women

Lorraine Ashbourne, Rosalie Craig, Joanna Scanlan, Amelia Bullmore and Tamsin Greig, all white women between their forties and sixties, sit or lean on sofas and flight cases, looking into the camera

The band is formed when five local women try and win a talent competition in Hebden Bridge. However, writing their first song makes them realise that music could mean a lot more to them than impressing a half-full village hall. Instead, the quintet begins to see just how much they have to say, and how they want to say it.

Eventually, though, a secret threatens to bubble to the surface, and ruin everything.

Daisy Haggard, Joanna Scanlan and the Williams brothers on Boat Story and making "a show about stories"

A poster for Boat Story sees Daisy Haggard, Craig Fairbrass, Tchéky Karyo, Paterson Joseph and Joanna Scanlan against a seaside backdrop featuring a shipwrecked boat strewn with bags of cocaine

Few TV thrillers have been favourably compared to Tarantino, the Coen brothers and Wes Anderson but Two Brothers Pictures’ ambitious six-part Boat Story, starring Daisy Haggard, Tchéky Karyo and Paterson Joseph, is no run-of-the-mill action series.

This multi-layered show, which started its run on BBC One in late November, begins conventionally enough, with Janet (Haggard) out walking on a wintry Yorkshire beach. However, the down-on-her-luck Janet discovers a washed-up boat containing two dead bodies and cocaine worth millions.

Comfort Classic: The Thick of It

Chris Addison, James Smith, Joanna Scanlan, Rebecca Front and Peter Capaldi in The Thick of It (credit: BBC)

Armando Iannucci, who cut his creative teeth on such wondrous radio fare as the news lampoon On the Hour, revealed recently that the inspiration for creating his era-­defining political satire The Thick of It, was the Iraq war. He was infuriated by what he saw as Prime Minister Tony Blair’s willingness to “twist the narrative” in order to justify his support for what many regarded as a woefully ill-thought-through conflict.