Glow season two on Netflix review: ★★★★★

Stupid, selfish, disobedient – sometimes constipated – ambitious, mean but always gorgeous: it's a big welcome back to the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling who return to GLOW for an astonishingly good second series. This is a much needed pick-me-up for our times, and an antidote to all our fraught conversations about sexism and #metoo backlash.

We understand if this is surprising news. Set in the eighties, and featuring the clouds of stiff, flammable hair and leg warmers that Stranger Things managed to avoid, GLOW follows a group of misfit women who get cast in an American wrestling show airing on cable. Can you hear the cheap canned laughter and tacky shots of women rolling about in spandex?

Well, forget it. This is a drama from the creators of Orange is the New Black, and is every bit as brilliant. It's often argued that Orange took a sell-able idea of a white woman who finds herself in jeopardy, and used it to hang stories about blackness in America, police brutality, prejudice and privilege off the back of it. GLOW has replaced prison walls with a wrestling ring, and police brutality with more emphasis on the oppressive nature of the patriarchy.



Our two charismatic protagonists – rivals in the wrestling ring and in 'real life' – return as almost-friends again, with some time having passed since Ruth (Alison Brie) slept with Debbie (Betty Gilpin)'s husband. Ruth is full of ideas for how to sell GLOW (this is also the name of their wrestling show, to be clear) and so finds herself berated by their coked-up director Sam Silvia (Marc Maron). He's not an altogether bad guy though. He's learning to love his daughter. It's complicated.

All around them is a cast of women who are every bit as moronic and vicious, kind and loyal, colourful, boring or weak as men. And they live their unconventional lives with varying degrees of success. Behind them all is a quick-witted script that pulls no political punches, good humour and plenty of glitter.

So, take yourself away from Twitter and remind yourself that women can be mad enough to give one another enemas in times of need, horrid enough to fight viciously for the spotlight, and brilliant enough to unite in making a terrible TV show watchable for an American audience. You'll remember that it's awesome being a woman. Trust us.