Before Joanna Scanlan will talk about her hit BritBox series “Riot Women,” she gives a shoutout to a remarkable moment in her remarkable, BAFTA-winning career.

“I want to say I was in Gloucester in ’85-86, about six months, working at the Gloucester Stage Company for Israel Horowitz.

“I absolutely had a wonderful time,” she continued in a Zoom interview from London. “I loved the whole Boston area so much. I left only because my visa ran out and I couldn’t work. So I am so thrilled to talk to the Boston Herald.”

“Riot Women” in its very different way is also thrilling, a limited series that speaks to women “of a certain age,” unleashing their voice and speaking up after being told to sit on the sidelines and keep still.

We meet Scanlan’s Beth Thornton in the series’ opening scene where she is fumbling her suicide attempt. She just can’t seem to properly hang herself.

“As one journalist said, actually, very appropriately,” Scanlan, 64, noted, “she is at the end of her rope. She has had enough. She’s given up.

“But she’s interrupted by her phone ringing — and being such a dedicated, responsible — over responsible really — human being, she can’t resist answering it.

“I think there’s something deeply funny about that. Somebody who just can’t let the phone ring, even when you’re trying to exit this world. A lot of stories end with ‘The End’ and this story starts with an end that doesn’t happen. That’s beautiful, beautiful writing.”

Beth with her cohorts — they refer to themselves as menopausal women who’ve been discarded and ignored — decide to form a punk band they call Riot Women. And everything changes.

Scanlan doesn’t see anger as driving Beth. “She is driven to needing to be engaged with the world. In a passionate sense — and that that comes out through creative expression. That’s what she wants most.”
With S2 already in the works, was she surprised these “Women” are a hit?

“I knew there was a risk — the risk that maybe the demographic of who would be interested in it would be too small or too narrow. And it couldn’t be further from the truth!

“Like, I met a 15-year-old boy the other day who said he was really enjoying ‘Riot Women.’  It wasn’t written for him, but he’s loving it. It’s had a much wider appeal than I expected.

“Although I got a few inklings when we were making it. Because we were filming all those concerts, we had a lot of different supporting artists and extras for different scenes.

“And they were extremely over excited about it. I mean, they were jumping up and down with excitement. And they hadn’t seen the finished version.”

The first two “Riot Women” episodes air Wednesday on BritBox

Amelia Bullmore (Yvonne Vaux), Rosalie Craig (Kitty Eckersley) and Tamsin Greig (Holly Gaskell) in “Riot Women.” (Photo Helen Williams/courtesy of BritBox)