Let’s start with this:

This a song by Voice of Baceprot. They are an Indonesian all-woman metal trio. The song is called “God, Allow Me (Please) To Play Music”. I can’t claim to know how Islam works in Indonesia, and considering Indonesia has the largest Muslim population in the world at around quarter of a billion, there’s bound to be a lot of variety. With that in mind, lyrics like…

Why today, many people wear religion to kill the music?

… and …

I’m not the criminal
I’m not the enemy
I just wanna sing a song to show my soul

… do feel like this band is actually fighting for their right to exist as they are in a world hostile to their gender and possibly the arts in general. Granted, it would be ignorant of me to make too much of an inference based on this information alone, as I don’t really know that much about Indonesia.

Part of why I bring this up is that the band is aware of this TV series and the cast of the series is aware of the band and there has apparently been some kind of interaction even if most of that has been kept private.

I found this TV series, because Channel 4’s recommendation system brought it to my attention after the last Taskmaster finale. So, I ended up binging it. Not that it takes that much time with only twelve 30 minute episodes available. I had seen the creator’s debut film, Polite Society, before, which encouraged me to take a look.

The point-of-view character is Amina, a young Muslim PhD student looking to find a husband. During this latter quest, she comes across Ahsan and is then persuaded into trying out for a band in exchange for a date with him. This band is the nominal Ladyparts and while the date doesn’t lead to anything, Amina very much enjoys playing with the band and ends up joining them despite her anxiety regarding playing in front of an audience.

The band consists of Saira, the frontwoman, Bisma, the basist, Ayesha, the drummer (and Ahsan’s sister), and there’s also Montaz, the manager. They are all Muslim, but have very different approaches to the religion, which you can immediately see from the variety of garments they use. These range from Saira’s use of none to Momtaz covering herself fully except for her eyes and hands. However, Saira considers Momtaz her best friend.

And Momtaz is hardly a traditionalist. The way she dresses is her decision and prerogative (as it should be). The older woman she lives with (her grandmother? I didn’t catch this) does cover her body and hair, but not her face. Also, Momtaz doesn’t let her dress limit her. She smokes under it and she sells women’s undergarments for a living. In the montage at the beginning of the series, where the bandmembers are introduced, there’s a middle aged Muslim woman who comes to Momtaz for something to wear. Initially Momtaz goes into a salesperson mode quickly regurgitating everything she has. When the woman chooses “fuck me gently” kind of underwear from the list, Momtaz immediately loses the brashness. She gets it. She knows the woman just wants some attention from her husband and has had to gather a lot of courage to vocalize that need. If Momtaz can help with that, she is going to.

Momtaz is my favorite of the main characters, but there is one side character that is easily better: Amina’s mother, Seema. She does not give a fuck. She’s not much for nonsense. Amina covers her hair completely, but Seema won’t. Seema does not give a fuck. She tries to argue with Amina that she is in no hurry to marry and that Seema herself made a mistake in marrying young. This right in front of her husband. Later, when Amina does decide to play the gig at the last second, Seema was already waiting for this decision with her leather jacket on. Her husband is more of a coconspirator than a victim in all of this, but has learned to stay out of Seema’s way.

All in all, in many ways, it’s just a British sitcom, but those are generally very good. They make a limited number of episodes at a time (six in the case), because there is usually just one or two writers, who write all the episodes for a series (which is what they call a season in Britain). Compare that to the army of writers needed to get out season of 23 episodes and keep in mind that many of the producers are actually writers as well, but just couldn’t be credited as one due to the guild rules. There’s a cohesion here in a way those American sitcoms can’t reach.

Many of the jokes and gags are quite basic, but in a new context. But there is also a lot of things to mine here and they definitely use that as well. Part of me does feel I’m being exoticist here. This is also a big point of the second season, which I almost felt was calling me out for watching and enjoying the show. I don’t know if this was the goal.

Still, a strong recommendation.