What To Watch Today: We Are Lady Parts, on Peacock

Welcome to Recommendation Machine, your daily IndieWire destination for TV suggestions of what to watch. Each weekday, we’ll offer up a series we think should be on your viewing radar. Though most of the shows included here are recent offerings from networks and streaming services, this will also be a place to take a look at different chapters in TV history readily available for anyone looking to immerse themselves in an ever-expanding medium.

As everyone with even a passing connection to TV will have happily told you for the better part of the last decade, there are too many shows. They’ll use words like cornucopia or plethora or deluge or glut. Bottom line: There are plenty of options for things to queue up next. So, while we’ll try to provide as many of those as we can from streaming’s heavy hitters like Netflix, Hulu, and HBO Max, there will also be plenty of chances to highlight the best shows on lesser-known services —  hidden gems to try out during one of those free trials you haven’t used up yet. International shows, docuseries, some projects that, at first glance, might not even seem like TV: They’re all up for grabs. 

In every installment, we’ll not only make a case for the show itself, but pick out some particular elements that make the whole thing worth a try. And for those who may have already taken the plunge on that day’s pick, we’ll also try to throw in some next-step ideas for something similar. Along the way, we may even toss in some suggestions for an album or a book or a movie. There’s no telling what the Recommendation Machine might manage to turn out next!

All past Recommendation Machine installments will be carefully housed here, for your bookmark and perusal needs. For now, here’s our choice for today’s show that’s very much worth your TV-watching energy:

“We Are Lady Parts”

Where to Watch: Peacock

“We Are Lady Parts” is constantly in motion. It’s not the kind of out-of-control frenzy that usually points to a show having no idea what to do to make its central characters compelling. Instead, this Channel 4/Peacock production, written and directed by creator Nida Manzoor, moves at the pace of someone trying to make sense of a world gradually shifting around her.

The show was an immediate highlight of Thursday morning’s Gotham Award nominees, getting recognized in both Breakthrough Series and Outstanding Performance in a New Series. The latter nomination went to Anjana Vasan, who stars as Amina, a PhD microbiology student whose guitar playing skills catch the eye of a local punk band. After a rocky intro and some deep questioning whether she’s cut out for musical rebellion (and vice versa), Amina gradually ingratiates herself with Lady Parts’ more skeptical members.

Life becomes a whirlwind for Amina, who now finds herself balancing lab work, band practice, and the search for a husband. “We Are Lady Parts” gives the tiniest windows into her psychological balancing act, with daydream flourishes that run the gamut from cartoon Cupid arrows to courtyard dream ballet sequences to Kubrick-inspired replays of dates gone wrong. Whether Amina is trying to reassure her preexisting friend group that she’s on track to marry a devout Muslim man or lending her guitar solo effort to some patriarchy-unpacking songs, Manzoor takes full advantage of the TV tools at her disposal to keep things moving along.

Vasan really does an impressive job in helping keep “We Are Lady Parts” operating in full force. She seems just as comfortable showing Amina’s bottled-up romantic frustrations as she is playing alongside puppets or starring in a mini-‘40s Hollywood melodrama. Over the course of the show’s six-episode season, Amina gets more comfortable veering away from her established comfort zone, but Vasan makes each of those incremental steps feel natural.

The overall series nomination is also a nod to the fact that this isn’t just Amina’s show. The other women in Lady Parts get their turns in the narrative spotlight, particularly Saira (Sarah Kameela Impey), the band’s lead singer and self-appointed leader. Through her and the conversations between all the other members, “We Are Lady Parts” uses the band’s music as a knowing way to address gender, religion, and how music can shift people’s perceptions. Lady Parts isn’t just a quintet of variations on the same person, something the show will hopefully get a chance to keep exploring if there’s a Season 2.

Until then, there’s always the Season 1 soundtrack, complete with a few originals (the song that the band puts together organically at the end of the second episode is one of the show’s highlights so far) and some spirited covers. Especially while knowing that Vasan, Impey, along with Juliette Motamed and Faith Omole, all played their own instruments to help make Lady Parts a reality, it’s easy to listen away while you keep your fingers crossed for more.

Missed any other outputs from Recommendation Machine? You can read every past version here. 

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