Lucy Punch

Motherland's achievement: its near universal appeal

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

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.

Following last year's pilot from Sharon Horgan, Holly Walsh and Graham and Helen Linehan, here's a whole series, centring on struggling mums, competitive mums - and mums whose idea of party food is to mash "four caterpillar cakes into a human centipede". In the hysterical opener, Julia (Anna Maxwell Martin, amazing) still can't cope, having organised a "massive fuck-off" children's birthday do. Meanwhile, Lucy Punch's smiling shark Amanda is circling.

Motherland reaches similar heights to Fawlty Towers

Within the first minute of Motherland (BBC Two), a new sitcom from Sharon Horgan and Holly Walsh about being a mum and how bloody awful it is, Julia (Anna Maxwell Martin) is beating her mobile phone against a banister in frustration. It was hard not to be reminded of Basil Fawlty beating his car with a tree branch in vein-swelling exasperation.

TV preview: Motherland, BBC2

The pilot of Motherland went out last year and was one of the best pilots I've seen in recent memory. But then that's no surprise.

Preview - Motherland

The first series of Motherland begins Tuesday 7th November on BBC Two. Here are Sophie's thoughts on the opening episode...

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.