Writer Anna Rees reflects on The Curfew, the Channel 5 adaptation of Jayne Cowie’s dystopian novel, exploring a Britain where men are legally confined indoors after 7pm in the name of women’s safety. As this dark feminist utopia unfolds, Rees probes a deeper moral question: can a society governed by suspicion and control ever deliver the justice and restoration that faith demands?
You’re out late and music is playing.The night is abuzz with sequined outfits, and the slightly slurred voices of friends laughing. A fluorescent rickshaw rolls past, blaring bubblegum pop. Your hairspray gave up hours ago, and it’s time to end the night with a bag of greasy chips.
As you meander home in the chill, the streets are empty. But look up. In each window, a pair of sullen, envious eyes gazes back. Every man across the country has been ordered to stay in – every night, indefinitely. This is the law. This is Britain.
That is the world we enter in The Curfew, the dystopian series new to Channel 5, based on Jayne Cowie’s novel After Dark. Originally released on Paramount+ in 2024, the show is female-written and directed.
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In a bid to tackle violence against women, men are forbidden from going out after 7pm. Any man who dares leave the house is immediately given away by a mandatory ankle tag, and a plucky squad of female police officers set off to arrest him.
The opening scenes of young women carelessly marauding through the night present a dizzying premise.
The opening scenes of young women carelessly marauding through the night present a dizzying premise. If only. Where would I wander, how free would I feel, if I knew no man would be lurking around a corner or hiding in a park?
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But in this feminist utopia, freedom comes at a cost. A darker side of the gender split quickly unfurls. The same jovial group of tipsy young women begin to taunt the men who are shut in, daring them to come out. An under-class is created, where young women know they have the upper hand. Teenage boys watch gloomily as they are led to believe they are inherently a problem, and older men despise those of their own gender who support the curfew, calling them traitors.
When a woman is found murdered during the curfew, we soon learn that taking men out of the equation isn’t an ironclad guarantee of women’s safety.
When a woman is found murdered during the curfew, we soon learn that taking men out of the equation isn’t an ironclad guarantee of women’s safety. It’s a chilling notion echoed by our own real-world events, like the Epstein files revealing the role of Ghislane Maxwell in sexually abusing girls: some women have the capacity to harm their sisters.
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By creating a gender divide, The Curfew does not present a society of equality, but one of paranoia. A world governed by fear can never be the solution to evil. The series also glosses over several prerequisites. Would parliament, which is 60% male, really vote to introduce a curfew in the first place? When did police forces become so female-dominant? What about the domestic violence which takes place behind closed doors? We have to suspend our belief. Nevertheless, The Curfew shows us a society where women’s safety is taken so seriously that Brits are prepared to turn the world as we know it upside down. The fact that that only exists on screen is the real tragedy.
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