Another show from the Guardian's list of top TV of 2022 was "Motherland", specifically season three of "Motherland". However, I hadn't previously watched the show, so thought it best to start at the beginning with the first run, that originally aired as a pilot in September of 2016 and as a full series the following year. After quite the spell of fine, if uninspired, sitcoms I've watched this year the step up in quality for this run of "Motherland" was quite pronounced.
Julia (Anna Maxwell Martin) is a stressed-out working mother of two, whose work is suffering as she has to manage the school run each day. She becomes friends with Liz (Diane Morgan) and Kevin (Paul Ready) as they bond over being the parents not readily included in the social circle of alpha mother Amanda (Lucy Punch). Julia attempts to learn the tricks to negotiating the perils of middle-class parenting where each attempt to ease her load only seems to make it worse.
There comes a point in reviewing every comedy where you just have to accept that people's comedic tastes are very different and I'm sure that a proportion of people who give the show a watch won't enjoy it. I did laugh at this quite a lot though. I'm not quite as sold on the cringy aspects that make up the majority of the shows humour but the dialogue, particularly of the lines given to Diane Morgan's Liz and really well done. The shows writing team at this point is Sharon Hogan, Graham Linehan and Helen Serafinowicz - I know, for various reasons, that particular writing team won't remain together for the full run, but at this stage there are some heavy hitters with excellent comedic pedigrees there.
Performances are good as are the setups for the episodes. I enjoyed this season and look forward to pushing on with season two soon.
