Anna Maxwell Martin

Anna Maxwell Martin on playing TV's most frazzled mum

The queen of period drama is casting off her bonnet and venturing into sitcom with Motherland. She talks about brutal parenting, competing with Cate Blanchett - and misbehaving on set.

Top 40 TV Shows of 2016: #17 Motherland

Is this a sign 2016 wasn't a great year for comedy? The second highest-ranking sitcom in our list - if you even count Fleabag as a sitcom - was only a one-off pilot episode.

BBC Sitcom Season: review of the pilots

Some of comedy's hottest names have been busy working on new sitcom pilots for BBC iPlayer, airing in September, with the hope of these creative projects later being picked up for a television series.

Undoubted comedy of the week was Motherland, a terribly truthful exposition of what it means to battle between being the "good" mother - a flawlessly moneyed, pretty, organised and quietly angry Lucy Punch - and the hopeless, exemplified here by Diane Morgan, who lives off frozen food, only gives a forlorn what-the-bugger-now sigh when she severs her finger, and is quietly happy.

Caught in the middle, as I suspect an entire 90% of British mothers are and always have been, is the phenomenal Anna Maxwell Martin as Julia, who makes the one mistake - one! - of lying, once. When asked, by the impossibly kind school to which she ferries with difficulties her two children, whether she had forgotten it was half-term, she opts for a proudly cheerful "No. No?" and so mires herself in a day of tense phone calls, criminal driving, accidental and deliberate snobbery, blood, wine and insane hunger while trying to hold down a job in event management. She's due later in her hellish week to have Peter Mandelson introduce the Women in Construction awards, which deserves an award of its own. As does the terse "I don't have to come to the office for a whole day to watch Elaine print out a press release."

"What time is it now?" she begs Liz (Morgan) as they struggle with their many kids, with prayers for it to be about 4.30pm, or if possible midnight. "Just after midday." "Fucking HELL." It's written by, among others, Sharon Horgan and Graham Linehan, features the most fascinating annoying dad yet written, and is a sure triumph.

Motherland review

Sharon Horgan and Graham Linehan's slapstick sitcom shows the fullblown apocalypse of child-rearing.

Motherland, BBC Two, review

Promising pilot of comedy about middle-class parenting.

Motherland preview

Frenetic, stressy and trying to juggle several balls at once... the whole tone of Motherland has a lot of parallels with the chaotic realities of parenthood, which it represents so well.

BBC Landmark Sitcom Season: the pilots review

In my last post I looked at three of the sitcom revivals that the BBC have produced but alongside these pieces, this new season also includes five new sitcom pilots. Over the next two weeks, all five of these shows will air and in this article I will pass judgement on them all.

Motherland - review

It's straight to the naughty step if the BBC declines to commission a full series.