Exclusive: Sally Wainwright reveals the real-life inspiration behind Riot Women - and whether she'll return to police dramas after Happy Valley

One of the points of this show is women of a certain age, but it's not just about the menopause, it's about the responsibilities that come your way. My marriage broke down, my two boys are adults, but they still come through with their new, different problems as they get older. It feels like you're just carrying a lot of stuff and, in the middle of that, you start to feel like you're disappearing because your hormones are whittling away. I suddenly started to feel like a little old lady, and that was a real shock. So I wanted to write about that feeling, but in a way that was uplifting, interesting and entertaining.

I came up with the idea about ten years ago, when I was getting into my 50s and realised my mum had dementia. A few things start piling on when you get to a certain age. When you get to 40, you suddenly realise you don't give a s*** what people think any more. You genuinely don't worry about all those niggly things; you get to that age where it just stops and you're sorted. Then the weird thing is, you get to 50 and things all go wrong again. You're often at the height of your career, so you've got a lot of responsibility at work, and the big thing for me was my mum had started to get dementia. I just didn't see it coming and wasn't prepared for it. There are no guidelines, like when your kids start school and you get all this help; there's nothing. You have stuff to deal with that you didn't quite anticipate. You have to get tough as you get older to deal with what comes your way and it often coincides with the menopause.

I've always wanted to write about a rock band. It's one of those aspirational things that's universal, that most people at some point in their life fantasise about being in. I just thought it was a nice combination that would allow me to write about the things that I was going through, but would not be miserable, downbeat and an energy drain. 

“I saw a show called Rock Follies when I was 13, about a female rock band, and it changed my life. I felt like I woke up. I suddenly thought: 'That's what I'm going to do, write telly.' And so it's always been there, this idea of writing about a female rock band, and how it came about in terms of the show. I asked all the women to learn the instruments properly, which they did – I really didn't want it to look like they were miming. They all loved it. It really bonded them and they had a ball doing it. A big part of that has been the fact that they've been on this extraordinary learning curve together to play the instruments.

I know I've got a reputation for strong female characters, but I like to think it's more that they're complex characters. I like writing about women because I think they’re emotionally more articulate than men. Men don't talk about emotions. In my experience, they talk about current affairs, football and golf. Also, I'm a woman, I'm in a woman's head, so while I do like writing for men, I can get into more emotional, granular detail if I'm writing about women.

I hope so. I would definitely do another crime show, but I'd have to find a way of coming at it that wasn't formulaic and think of something new.