Diane Morgan

This sitcom's comprehensive catalogue of parenting embarrassment moves on to the pool party, a parade of grubby, fleshy indignity given the unlikely twist of Julia (the terrifically taut Anna Maxwell Martin) being forced to attend minutes before a work event at which she had hoped to look pristine. Meanwhile, Liz (Diane Morgan) is waiting for a potential date to ring her back, and pathetic Kevin (Paul Ready) meets his non-pathetic doppelganger nemesis.

Motherland, episode 2 review

Magnifying a very special hell in this messy mom-com.

Motherland: one of the best comedies in the last decade

I cannot recommend it highly enough, thanks to its knuckle-chewing awkwardness and leftfield casting.

After the pilot, it was obvious Motherland would return

Creators Sharon Horgan and Graham Linehan mine middle-class motherhood for comedy. These aren't your ordinary middle-class mothers though: they are Mumsnet types that live in large houses in suburban London.

You should enjoy Motherland, which features the brilliant Diane Morgan (though not here in her usual faux naive alter ego Philomena Cunk), Anna Maxwell Martin and Lucy Punch in a comedy of middle-class manners and mores - think of it as Mumsnet with a more pronounced sense of self-irony. Punch plays the character and anti-hero Amanda, an intensely annoying alpha mum who is a mash-up of Nigella Lawson, Joanna Lumley and Rachel Johnson (by which I mean the worst bits of all of them). Not the funniest thing on the telly, but pretty good satire, and worth catching.

Review: Motherland, episode two, BBC2/iPlayer

If you are or you've been a parent you'll love it, but you'll be watching it through your fingers.

Motherland's achievement: its near universal appeal

Both parents and the happily child-free will enjoy this borderline revolutionary BBC Two comedy.

Motherland: a brutally honest depiction of parenthood

Expect terrifying alpha-mums, chaotic childcare and party politics, says Johanna Thomas-Corr.

Motherland (BBC2) returns, after a pilot, for a series. Good news for middle-class metropolitan breeders for whom it is a funhouse mirror they can point into and chuckle. When I say "they", I mean we. And actually everything is terrifyingly recognisable, testament to the writers' (loads of well-known people) powers of observation, but also why I find it a teeny bit ghastly. Golly, doesn't Anna Maxwell Martin's overwrought Julia annoy well? Thank heavens for Lucy Punch's fabulously Stepfordy queen bee Amanda, and for Diane Morgan's super-droll Liz. And for Ben Crompton, Animal Man, rubbish children's entertainer. Rubbish AND racist. "If your act was amazing I'd put up with a tiny bit of racism," says Liz. Ha!

Motherland review: being a parent is a laughing matter

Motherland (BBC2) is a comedy that captures those moments of parental misery and magnifies them.