Menopausal women are finally getting storylines they deserve

Keeley Hawes' new Channel 4 and Prime Video drama The Assassin introduces a premise that feels both bold and overdue, writes Beth Johnson, professor of television and media studies at the University of Leeds.

- Beth Johnson on The Assassin

It follows Julie (Hawes), a menopausal woman, overlooked and emotionally stalled, who worked as a hitwoman in her youth and unexpectedly comes out of retirement to return to the profession.

It's pulpy, stylised and laced with dark humour. But beneath the genre trappings lies something more striking - a cultural pivot in how menopause and midlife womanhood is being written and visualised on British television.

Historically, menopause has been television's silent transition. Onscreen, it was something female characters either didn't have, didn't talk about, or, when acknowledged, were mocked for. Sitcoms of the 1980s and 1990s, such as Birds of a Feather or Absolutely Fabulous, played menopausal symptoms for laughs.

In drama, menopause tended to arrive invisibly: Women stopped being protagonists, were subtly phased out of storylines, or returned only as wives, mothers or medical cases.

Television has always been shaped by industry ideas about youth, sex appeal and marketability - ideas that left little room for midlife women unless confined to supporting roles - or contained within the domestic, ensemble structures of soap operas.

While shows like New Tricks (2003), Last Tango in Halifax (2012) and Call the Midwife (2012) gradually shifted the dial, menopause itself remained offscreen; considered either too niche, too biological, or too awkward to dramatise.