Motherland

Motherland’s return has to be one of its best series yet, stuffed with joke after joke, character development and outstanding performances from its seasoned cast. A hugely entertaining watch that I’ll be definitely be bingeing a second time.

The show remains very funny, which is the most important thing.

Motherland is at its best when it is skewering what it knows: the snobbery, hypocrisy and narcissism of a specific strain of white, middle-class London, plus the hellscape of the school gate. And when it is at its best, it is glorious.

This is rich terrain that has been insufficiently explored by a comic mind as fearlessly audacious as Horgan’s. Motherland plants a flag there in its very first scene and commences building a legacy. This is an impressive series, and lots of fun, if you don’t mind revisiting or envisioning everyday, low-level trauma.

Well-intentioned and with strong ideas worth supporting--seriously, people, help out your spouses--the Sundance Now comedy (that originally aired overseas on BBC Two) can’t balance the chaos it creates with the chaos it instills in viewers. Cringe comedy can provide an outlet to pent-up frustrations, but Motherland mainly builds more of them.

There is a more interesting, angrier, sadder programme half-visible beneath the surface of Motherland, about the sacrifices women are forced to make, hour by hour, in a world where they might not be able to have it all but are expected to anyway.

Motherland has too many parenting cliches to overcome, despite some funny parts. Nearly all of it is too forced, too set up, too predictable. Parents or not, your time is better spent on Catastrophe.