THE PREMISE:

"A look at the highs and lows of the band members that make up a Muslim female punk band, Lady Parts, as seen through the eyes of Amina Hussein, a geeky PhD student who is recruited to be their unlikely lead guitarist."

OUR REVIEW:

We Are Lady Parts, for the uninitiated, follows a fictitious British, all-woman, all-Muslim punk band called “Lady Parts.” They are loud. They are brash. And they are really, really funny, with songs like “Ain’t No One Gonna Honour Kill My Sister but Me” And “Voldemort Under My Headscarf.”

The series originally aired on British Channel 4 in 2021 and was later picked up by Peacock in the U.S. 

The first season was both a broad comedy and a nuanced portrayal of a group of women who, quite literally, marched to the beat of their own drummer. 

At the center of the show was Amina (Anjana Vasan), a PhD student and guitar teacher with crippling stage fright. When she’s recruited as the new lead guitar player in Lady Parts, she must confront her insecurities in a way that’s both hilarious and relatable. The season was about growing into yourself and owning who you are, as much as it was about playing fast and loud. 

Or, as one bandmember put it, “feminism innit?”

As season two opens, Amina has her PhD, and the band has gained minor notoriety after a small tour across the UK. From there, the show goes deeper into the stories and struggles of each of the individual band members.

Amina is caught in a love triangle with a wishy-washy folk singer (apparently her type) and Ahsan (Zaqi Ismail), her drummer’s brother and her unrequited crush from season one. 

Drummer Ayesha (Juliette Motamed) is struggling with whether to come out as queer to her parents and how being a closeted woman is impacting her dating life. 

Bassist Bisma (Faith Omole) grapples with her identity as both a strong black woman and a Muslim, and how that affects her role as a wife and mother. There’s a particularly poignant scene in a barbershop where she sees her hair — out of its hijab and beautifully braided — and feels the full power and strength of the image. How, she wonders, can she hide all that away?

Momtaz (Lucie Shorthouse), Lady Parts’ manager, must cope with the bands’ growing success and ambitions in the face of her own limited resources. She also gets in touch with what her real goals and values are, as they relate to the growing community of artists around her. 

The central theme of season two is told through Saira (Sarah Kameela), the frontwoman and founder who has big ambitions for the band, but also wants to stay true to what makes them so authentic. With modest success comes the allure of bigger, wider fame and a chance to connect to a worldwide audience. But what does that mean when you’re just a punk at heart? 

Grappling with whether to “sell out” is something of a trope, to be sure, but the show succeeds both in earnestness and nuance, and through the fact that it’s able to offer such a unique perspective on those ideas.

All those recurring themes are tied together through the lens of being young, female, and Muslim during a period in history when that’s no easy task. Creator and showrunner Nida Manzoor takes a “spoonful of sugar” approach at times, sprinkling in slapstick comedy and occasional moments of Scott Pilgrim surrealism to deliver what can be powerful and important messages.

We Are Lady Parts is great because it’s so full of laughs, and great music, and because all the actors bring so much authenticity to their roles, and because the writing is so sharp. And it’s great because it offers representation to a subset that is so often portrayed as either the victim – or the vigilante.

But, really, the show is great because it does all this without hitting its audience over the head, or over-sermonizing its core messages of feminism, empowerment, and self-actualization. Those elements are all there – and they are damned powerful – but it’s also just a fun, funny, very well-made half-hour of television. And, like the band itself, there’s nothing quite like it. 

In a way, that’s just like what a great song can do. Some of the best music hides powerful messages inside hooks and melodies that get your feet moving and your head bobbing and, before you know it, you’re signing along to the revolution. 

We Are Lady Parts season two is streaming now on Peacock.