When Motherland was quietly cancelled after its Christmas special in 2022, a small subsection of people in the UK were very, very angry. Strongly worded tweets were sent. Mumsnet message boards were filled with incensed comments. Diane Morgan, one of the show’s stars, said women with prams kept running up to her on the street to badger if it would ever return to screens. In sad news for the show’s cult following, the answer was: it would not.
Not in Motherland form, at least. Now, in 2025, it has returned via spinoff instead, courtesy of fan favourite character Amanda, played by the most perhaps the most typecast woman in the world, Lucy Punch.
But boy, does she make that typecasting work for her. In case you didn’t watch Motherland, Punch plays the resident posh totty, try-hard mum with a barely hidden superiority complex and a blowout so bouncy it could almost distract you from her crumbling personal life. Almost.
Towards the end of Motherland, Amanda gets divorced and forced out of her capacious, spotlessly clean home in Acton, forcing her to consider pastures new. Amandaland picks up a little while after this, once Amanda has settled herself in “SoHa” (South Harlesden) and relocated her kids from private to state school.
Amanda’s bumpy descent to earth brings with it plenty of new faces, as well as the welcome return of two Motherland cast members: Anne, the beloved, bumbling Irish mum of four who acts as Amanda’s lady in waiting, played by Philippa Dunne, and Felicity, Amanda’s cool-but-cruel mother, played (in a feat of perfect casting) by Joanna Lumley.
As for new friends, Derry Girls’ Siobhan McSweeney steps in as the stand-offish, trendy lesbian chef Della, and Line of Duty’s Rochenda Sandall joins as her zany, former stylist wife, Fi. Then there’s Amanda’s gruff, handsome neighbour, Mal (Samuel Anderson), fellow parent JJ (very enjoyably played by Ekow Quartey) and of course their many, now-teenage offspring.
While Amandaland may have seemed like a rather rogue choice of spinoff to some (I’m sure many would have had their fingers crossed for Lizland, but Diane Morgan’s got her hands full being Philomena Cunk, so that was always looking unlikely) it actually firmly supersedes expectations.
Lucy Punch proves herself to be more than cutout for the job and she has the perfect deputy in Anne, who is as frenetic and funny as ever. The writing oh-so-satisfyingly skewers London’s middle-class parents in a way we’ve been sorely missing since the loss of Motherland, covering everything from the magic-mushroom-chocolate-eating, dry robe-clad mums to the dads fondly reminiscing about UK garage (pronounced by Amanda as “gar-ahhh-j”, of course).
And it’s not just repeating more of the same. A slight time jump means that all the characters’ children are now teenaged, allowing for all the brilliant humour that comes with being a parent of an underage-drinking, Finsta-owning, phone-addicted teen. In one such display, a teenage character opens her front door wearing a slogan tee that simply says “ketamine”. In another, teens struggle to pronounce the name of the Armagnac they stole, which is now making them violently sick. “The g is silent,” Amanda says as she corrects them.
All this action and wit is upheld perfectly by Lucy Punch, who makes the turn from enjoyable side character to magnetic main character with an unexpected, brilliant ease. It does slightly miss the sharp, umami-like quality (god, Amanda’s vocab really rubs off on you) of Motherland’s Liz, but hopefully Amandaland’s new flock of side characters can grow strong enough to provide a similar cut-through in time. I can’t say I had the highest of hopes for Amandaland, but I’m glad to be proven wrong. Turns out it packs quite the Punch.
Amandaland launches on February 5 on BBC One & iPlayer
