Get ready to rock! The second season of the critically-acclaimed, award-winning, fan-favorite comedy series We Are Lady Parts is set to premiere in the US and UK.
I abso-freaking love We Are Lady Parts and so glad this fabulous comedy series, about a punk band made up of all Muslim women, is back with Season 2. It’s one of the most refreshing shows on telly — hilarious and touching, intelligent and invigorating — full of life, not to mention kickin’ tunes, in all of its glory and messiness.
We experience the world of Lady Parts through our guide, Amina Hussain (Anjana Vasan, Killing Eve), who, in Season 1, was a geeky, insecure, people-pleasing microbiology Ph.D. student recruited to be the band’s lead guitarist by its front woman, Saira (Sarah Kameela Impey, Vera). Initially torn between the anarchic energy and punk spirit of the band and the more straight-laced, traditional world of her bestie, Noor (Aiysha Hart, A Discovery of Witches), and other uni friends, Amina finally became a full-fledged member of Lady Parts, joining vocalist and rhythm guitar player Saira, drummer Ayesha (Juliette Motamed, Halo), bassist Bisma (Faith Omole, Endeavour), and band manager Momtaz (Lucie Shorthouse, Rebus). She even helped them pen a new punk anthem!
When we meet up with them in Season 2, Lady Parts has just returned to London from a “magical summer of gigs,” during which they traveled throughout England in a beat-up camper van named “Karen” (hah!), playing for adoring audiences, with Ayesha’s brother (and Amina’s now-former crush), Ahsan (Zaqi Ismail, Baptiste), serving as their roadie. Coming off of this high and with a renewed artistic mission, they embark on recording their first album… except studio time costs thousands of pounds and the band is, in a word, skint. Worse yet, a rival band — a social media-savvy Gen Z Muslim band named Second Wife — has been gaining in popularity and making money from making music (including “updated” versions of some Lady Parts songs) and sponsored posts. Basically, doing what Lady Parts should be doing but isn’t. The worst: Eviction from the bedsit that served as Saira’s home and the band’s rehearsal space.
As the season progresses, each member of Lady Parts is forced to deal with matters of the self, getting support from family, like Amina’s mum, Seema (Shobu Kapoor, EastEnders), friends, and each other. Amina, now in her “villain era,” does what she wants, with whom she wants, and speaks up for herself, calling things as she sees them, although she might not be looking beyond the surface. For Ayesha, dating a woman she really likes causes her to struggle with whether to come out to or stay in with her parents, while Bisma, a wife and mother, a Muslim, and a Black woman, experiences a crisis of identity and self expression that arises from a visit to the hair salon. Meanwhile, Momtaz knows Montaz Records is more than her being the manager for Lady Parts, so to figure out what that is, she goes back to where she came from: Birmingham. And Saira, after meeting her idol, must reckon with her own conscience regarding the kinds of songs she and her bandmates write for Lady Parts.
All of that, delivered in a half-hour comedy series? That actually has laughs? Yes.
Binge-watching is something I rarely do anymore, so watching the screeners for We Are Lady Parts‘s six Season 2 episodes in one sitting says a lot for, and about, the show. It’s fun and funny as ever, with laughs and music galore, and I love that much of the music is an integral part of the comedy.
The stories are rich, too. I am not Muslim, a millennial, or a member of the LGBTQIA+ community, but I don’t have to be (nor does any viewer) to really get, not just understand conceptually, the deep uncertainty and distress experienced by Amina, Saira, Ayesha, Bisma, and Momtaz in Season 2. The same goes for their infectious joy, love, and humor. This is a hallmark of excellent writing and directing, both of which are handled dazzlingly by the BAFTA TV Award-winning creator of We Are Lady Parts, Nida Manzoor.
Three scenes in Season 2 took my breath away. They were so powerful that everything around me faded away (like in the movies) and all that remained were me and the scene on my screen. Two involve Bisma, one involves Saira. I can see each of them clearly in my mind’s eye right now, and I’m still blown away. To avoid spoilers, I’ll just say that they take boundary-breaking to another level in this series and they happen in Episodes 5 and 6.
We Are Lady Parts wouldn’t be what it is without its tunes, and the original music for the second season, like the first, is created by Nida Manzoor and her siblings, Sanya Manzoor and Shez Manzoor, the latter of whom composed the score for both seasons. I hope the producers release a soundtrack for Season 2 like they did for Season 1.
But wait, there’s more! Comedy legend Meera Syal (The Kumars at No. 42, Goodness Gracious Me) guest stars in Season 2, and education activist Malala Yousafzai, the co-recipient of the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2014, makes a cameo appearance.
We Are Lady Parts: Season 2 premieres in the US as a six-episode binge tomorrow, Thursday, May 30, exclusively on Peacock (where you binge the entirety of Season 1 in under three hours). The UK premiere of the new season, on Channel 4, is also tomorrow.
Commissioned for Channel 4 by Head of Comedy Charlie Perkins and Commissioning Editor Laura Riseam, We Are Lady Parts is produced by Working Title Television (WTTV), part of Universal International Studios, a division of Universal Studio Group. The executive producers are Nida Manzoor and Surian Fletcher-Jones, Tim Bevan, and Eric Fellner for WTTV. John Pocock is the producer. The series is distributed by NBCUniversal Global TV Distribution.
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We Are Lady Parts (Music From The Original Series) [Explicit] (Season 1) – Amazon Music
We Are Lady Parts (Music From The Original Series) (Season 1) – Apple Music
