We Are Lady Parts, a limited series just released on Peacock and Girls5Eva, which dropped on the same service last month, don’t seem to have a lot in common on the surface. But scratch that, and the two have a lot in common.

We Are Lady Parts is all punk rock and girl power energy, while Girls5Eva has a middle-aged former girl group straining for relevance in 2021 vibe. But both shows feature engaging characters, smart dialogue and original tunes.

Lady Parts is a London-based all-girl punk group trying to make it big. They decide they need a lead guitarist and the only person who fits the band’s punk aesthetic is Amina (Anjana Vasan), a geeky microbiology PhD student, who’s on the is more concerned about landing a husband than playing guitar. Lady Parts’ fierce and enigmatic front-woman Saira (Sarah Kameela Impey) sees past Amina’s timid demeanor (and crippling stage fright) and wants her in the band.

But Saira has an ace up her sleeve: Amina fancies Ahsan (Zaqi Ismail), the dreamy brother of fellow band member and Uber-driving drummer Ayesha (Juliette Motamed), and Saira uses this as leverage by offering to hook them both up on a date, but only if Amina agrees to join the band.

Amina gets swept up in the band’s joyful, anarchic energy and punk spirit, but feels like she has to balance her image in her two very different worlds – that of her more strait-laced university friends, led by her formidable BFF Noor, and the world of Lady Parts. (In an interesting twist, her parents, also Muslim, are much more relaxed and progressive than the uptight Amina; they aren’t the ones pushing her to get married.)

The rest of the cast include cartoon-drawing bassist and backing vocalist Bisma (Faith Omole) and mysterious Momtaz (Lucie Shorthouse),the band’s driven wheeler-dealer manager, along with their family, friends and lovers. That the characters are all Muslim is important (the girls get entrapped by a devious reporter who challenges their commitment to their faith) but it’s also not what defines the characters. Each person follows their faith differently and it only part of a rich full life.  

The series features a lot of performances, both of original punk songs and surprising cover tracks, written and adapted by Nida and her siblings Shez Manzoor (who also scored the show), Sanya Manzoor along with Benni Fregin.

We Are Lady Parts is a raunchy, unapologetically bold comedy and a joyful celebration of the richness and diversity found in contemporary London, with engaging young women asking the fundamental questions of life: Who am I? Where and with whom do I belong? This is a band of funny women seeking real agency and the ability to create their own identities in a world that wants to keep them down.

The aging girl group members of Girls5Eva are also outsiders; they are trying to move past their age and out of obscurity to generate an unlikely pop music comeback. The band of four former chart-toppers (their unusual moniker comes from from the fact that they were a five-person band until one of their members passed away.) Imagine a Spice Girls reunion after Ginger Spice died in a freak accident.

The four remaining members get a second shot at fame after one of their old songs gets sampled by a hot young rapper. Now navigating a world of TikTok videos and Instagram followers (they were last popular in the heyday of TRL Live) the four have to reckon with an unsympathetic music business without the scumbag manager who got them to the top of the charts originally.

Diva Wickie (played by Reneé Elise Goldsberry from Hamilton), motherly Dawn (singer Sara Bareilles) ditzy Summer (Busy Phillips, Cougartown) and snarky Gloria (Paula Pell, A.P. Bio) are the four very different members of the group, who bicker and break up and make up and make music together. Nothing comes easy for the group; their former manager puts an embargo on all their former hits so they have to write new music. Their new manager says she can make them stars, but only if they break up. And they all have messy personal lives that aren’t helped by their quests for fame.

Girls5Eva seems superficially funny but there really is a lot going on under the surface. Created by Meredith Scardino (The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt), the show has a subversive edge and a genuine charm to it. The women in the group, for all their bickering and in-fighting, are true friends.

Some of the situations that the group find themselves in are extremely contrived, and the end of the show seems a little too pat, but over eight episodes the writers lay the groundwork for an unlikely road to fame and fortune. This show is also chock full of original music and great comedy moments.

Both shows lean toward the raunchy; they feature swearing, frank sexual talk and other adult situations. Despite the differences in age, location, spirituality, ethnicity and more, the casts of both shows are very similar; both shows have a closeted (or formerly closeted) lesbian, the married one, the glam one, and the insecure one. There’s no heavy-handed preachy girl-power moralizing, just women trying to live their lives.

Both shows are quick binges (six half hours for Lady Parts and eight for Girls5Eva) and are loads of fun, for their differences and their similarities.