Listening to Radio 4 together while I scrub the hob

Continuing my trip down The Guardian's Top 50 TV Shows of 2021.  

#35 : Motherland

By its third series, you pretty much know where a sitcom will go. That’s true of Motherland, which barely attempted to deviate from its formula of middle-class mums being horrible to each other. But why bother when the blueprint is so good?


This is one I’ve watched and enjoyed from the beginning - I’m not convinced this season was its finest but it was perfectly watchable and contained more than the standard number of laughs.  I suspect whether you’ll enjoy it comes entirely down to whether you’ve had kids or not - I don't really know what more to say about it.

All the characters in this are reasonably one-dimensional, but amusingly so in terms of representing your school-gate mum (or occasional dad) stereotype.  Anna Maxwell Martin, Lucy Punch, Diane Morgan, Paul Ready and Philippa Dunne all play their part well - although I'm going to call out Diane Morgan and Lucy Punch in this season for having a bit more acting to do than they usually do.

Well - that's all there is to say really.  If you've got kids and you've not seen it then you'll probably find something to laugh at here, but start with season 1.  If you've not got kids, then you can probably safely move along...

#34 - Well worth a giggle
#36 - Pot the red, then screw back...

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