Bridget Christie makes a woman’s impatience funny without asking us to find her sweet. In The Change, her blunt, grounded performance keeps us interested even when her writing works a little too hard at being peculiar.
Fi1m perspective
In The Change (2023), Linda has spent so long attending to other people’s needs that her impatience scarcely needs explaining. Bridget Christie plays her without softening that impatience into something more agreeable. She writes the part too, giving this 50-year-old wife and mother good reasons to stop doing the jobs everyone else takes for granted. We felt relieved when Linda left on her motorbike, because Christie had made the prospect of another day of unpaid work feel so wearing. It is a funny, humane performance, and the clearest reason to watch the programme.
Christie began stand-up in 2004, with A Bic for Her (2013) marking a breakthrough after earlier shows about feminism. Her comedy mixes serious subjects with absurdity, self-mockery and surreal tangents. She also played Annie in Ghosts (2019), a recurring guest role. With The Change, she became the creator and writer of a series built around her own performance. Writing the lead herself lets her keep Linda’s irritation at the centre, rather than treating it as a problem to be tidied away.
Al Campbell’s direction gives the Forest of Dean an inviting, folky atmosphere, a convincing place for Linda to want to escape to. Around Christie are Monica Dolan as Carmel, Liza Tarbuck as Siobhain and Paul Whitehouse as Tony, an ensemble whose company is one of the programme’s pleasures. The move brings other people’s concerns into Linda’s attempt to attend to her own. Christie keeps her direct as the surrounding comedy grows more fanciful. That plainness is useful: we can follow what Linda wants without needing every eccentric encounter to amuse us.
The limitation is in the writing, which occasionally tries too hard to make the rural community peculiar. Christie is more persuasive when she stays with the unnoticed domestic jobs and the unfairness of always being responsible for them. The laughs come from a recognisable grievance, and her performance gives Linda permission to remain ungracious about it. There is enough stubborn life here to carry the weaker stretches. Start with The Change, provided a little overworked rural whimsy does not put you off.
Biography
Bridget Christie is an English stand-up comedian, actress and writer. Born in Gloucester in 1971, she trained at the Academy of Live and Recorded Arts in London. She began performing stand-up in 2004 after earlier work in theatre and has since written and performed multiple comedy tours and BBC Radio 4 series.
On television she created, wrote and starred as Linda in the Channel 4 series The Change (2023–2025). She has also appeared as Annie in Ghosts (2020–2022) and as a contestant on Taskmaster (2022). Christie has been nominated for a BAFTA Television Award for her performance in The Change.
