I have entered ‘nanna mode’ – bring me all your movies and shows about older women

I’ve been watching Meryl Streep, Candice Bergen, and Diane Keaton as a reminder, says Rebecca Shaw

I lost my grandmother a couple of years ago. My grief’s sharpness has worn down, and I’m ready to lean into the soft landing of older ladies

I have entered ‘nanna mode’. This does not mean I’m knitting, drinking enough cups of tea to kill Paddington Bear, or showing the ceiling instead of my face on video calls. Nonetheless, I have become steeped in ‘nanna’.

I’ve always had a soft spot for older ladies (and ladies of all ages). But I had this lightbulb moment, while watching Matlock — a reboot of a 1980s television show — starring Kathy Bates as a lawyer in her 70s coming out of retirement and getting up to shenanigans.

I have watched Bates on screen since I was a child and I loved every role and genre, every era. But I have found myself particularly enjoying watching her as an older woman, being a charming scamp, using her age and wisdom as an advantage in a society set up to disadvantage elderly people.

I thought about what else I’d been watching and, in what would be quite a boring movie-type montage, it came to me that it was all older-lady focused.

This was not deliberate, but once I thought about what was happening, I understood that it was, of course, because I lost my own beloved nanna a couple of years ago.

The hardness and sharpness of my grief had worn down, and I was ready to lean in to the soft landing of some older ladies.

What is ‘old’ is relative, of course. In our youth-obsessed culture, it’s not often that we get to see stories or portrayals of people older than 35, and so the category is flexible.

But my particular nanna mode indulgences have included Let Them All Talk (I’ve now seen it three times), which is about many things, but the short version is that it’s Meryl Streep and Candice Bergen (two of the most beautiful women on the planet) as friends fighting on a luxurious cruise ship. I cannot think of anything better.

There’s the one where a group of beautiful older ladies form a book club to read Fifty Shades of Grey, ingeniously called Book Club, and, of course, the sequel, where the ladies from the book club go to Italy.

A scene from Book Club: The Next Chapter, starring Diane Keaton, Jane Fonda, Candice Bergen and Mary Steenburgen

I’ve seen Poms, the film where Diane Keaton gets in to cheerleading.

I’ve even seen 80 For Brady, where 80-year-old women go to an NFL match to meet footballer Tom Brady.

Why did I watch it? Because it’s got older ladies going around doing stuff. I’ve watched Margo Martindale’s new show, where she pulls a maple syrup heist, which is a real thing. I’ve watched the new Ted Danson show set in a retirement home, where all the retired ladies want to have sex with him (rightly). If it has an older woman, I’m there.

I had been mainlining nannas, somehow, without really realising why. None of these women remind me of my nanna, a loving and funny woman, spirited and determined. OK, maybe she’s a tiny bit like if Matlock had been raised poor and ended up solving mysteries while cleaning toilets instead of being a lawyer. The point is she was special in her own way. Many people believe that about their grandmothers, and they are right.

I have been delving in to these worlds, spending time with old people, clearly looking for something to remind me of her. It hasn’t been like early on, when reminders that she was gone made me sad. Instead, I’ve been getting reminders that she lived. 

I’ve been drawn to stories about women who have bonded, who have grown old together and formed community.

One of the main themes of my nanna’s funeral was how many good friends she had for decades, cackling down the phone for hours, gabbing and gossiping until the literal day she died.

She and I had a special bond because of our sense of humour, too, and she’s in the air when I laugh at one of these films. My algorithm began to change, too, because it knows me better than I know myself.

A trickle of grandmother content quickly grew to a torrent. If someone posts something that features an old lady, I’m stopping my scroll, and my eyes have already filled with tears. But it’s not unpleasant; it is lovely, and it helps.

So bring me your movies and shows about older ladies. Bring me your Instagram stories about your nannas, your babas, your mee maws, your abuelas, your nonnas, your yia yias, your sitas, your nanis. If you can, take time out of your life to appreciate yours.

Call, check in, hang out, gossip, hold hands, laugh.

We could all go more nanna mode.

• Rebecca Shaw is a writer based in Sydney