"This extraordinary series, based on the collection of books, portrays the story of two young girls and their friendship over time. What is astounding to me is the agency and the “voice” of the two young prepubescent girls that is shown in ways rarely seen on screen. Psychologist Carol Gilligan, wrote extensively of the ways in which girl’s voices are squashed and eradicated by puberty. Likewise, filmmakers rarely portray this vital stage in young girl’s development. As the series progress and the two girls age, their female characters are impacted, twisted, and crushed by the pressure of society. It’s rare that one actually witnesses the crushing of girls into adults in such an exquisitely truthful manner. How these two girls struggle to survive and thrive under the pressures of marriage and sexuality and lack of educational access clamping down on them with their identity intact is brilliant. At the end of season one, I had the rarest experience: I felt like I had just finished one episode, not eight, as if I was at the very beginning of the story, not the end, and I longed for more narrative to come."

"Here's a band that's influenced anyone who's ever heard them - including me! They were the teenage band that pulled you out of the muck of post-puberty. It made sense in a J. D. Salinger kind of way. Confronting the world, kicking against the pricks, all those sort of motifs that you get with teenage years. The Chameleons were the band that organised your attack through the crap that was going on around you. Here's a story: when we first came over in '89, I thought The Chameleons were so massive. So I thought I'd ask people, ""Hey, when are The Chameleons playing Wembley? We're here, I want to see them!"" And they'd say, ""Never heard of them mate."" So I'd be like, ""No, no, no, The Chameleons, y'know, Script Of The Bridge?"" I'd just keep asking what enormo-dome they would be playing. And I could not believe how small a cult following they had - I was stunned to hear that this band didn't have such a wide following. In my view this band was bigger than Pink Floyd. I'm now friends with Mark Burgess and have been for 30 years. I'm always marveled by the stories that he tells me from the twists and turns of the band to how they could've been big but weren't. Script Of The Bridge is one of those lingering drones in music that's always been in the background."