Amandaland begins, in time-honoured Motherland fashion, under pressure on the school run. Except we’re not in Chiswick – we’re now in south Harlesden, Amanda is driving a Tesla for ever on the brink of running out of battery, and Georgie and Manus, who aren’t so little any more, have been forced to move school after the collapse of Mummy’s ruthlessly Hygge-Tygge’d life. Cue a pep talk by the worst, by which I mean the best, Motherland mother of all. “I’m a people person,” says Amanda. “And historically our people are people people. So get out there and find your people!”
Ah, it’s good to be back in hell. Spin-offs are always a risk, but Lucy Punch’s Amanda was a sure bet. Sorry, team Liz, but she was the best character in Motherland: the ideal Sharon-Horgan-sharpened instrument for impaling the worstexcesses, blind spots and hypocrisies of the posh, white, west London middle classes. By the end of the third and last series, Amanda had perversely become the cruel heart of the show. I felt actual compassion for her when she did that dance at the PTA fundraiser that got 400 TikTok likes. Weird, I know, but that’s what satire at its most skewering can do. It makes you care.
Amandaland is created and written by the Motherland team Holly Walsh, Helen Serafinowicz and Barunka O’Shaughnessy, with Horgan credited as creator. More of the same, then, which is a compliment, because it’s not as though the schedules are teeming with laser-sharp satirical sitcoms about vaginal mesh. Thus from the ashes of W4 Amanda rises to become the “queen of SoHa”. Because, according to Amanda, that’s what property experts are calling south Harlesden. “You mean that area around Wormwood prison?” asks Anne (Philippa Dunne). There’s lots to love, she prattles on, about the new school … the Stem hub, rock choir; they say the torture scene from A Clockwork Orange was filmed in the playground. Amanda: “I’m actually glad I took the kids out of private school. They’ve got way more chance of getting into Oxbridge from a bog-standard state.” When the writing is this good, it fizzes with the hysterical energy of perimenopause.
So no Julia, Liz or Kevin, then – at least not in the first four episodes – but Anne, happily, features heavily. The relationship between her and Amanda is toxic and codependent, but also, you have to concede, kind of sweet. The same goes for the narcissism-powered dynamic between Amanda and her mother, Felicity, played with Ab Fab levels of relish by Joanna Lumley. In episode one, she arrives with a tuck parcel from Waitrose, “now that you’ve only got a Tesco Metro”. There’s white wine, Earl Grey chocolates for the children and goji berries for Amanda. “That actually will be really nice for my bircher muesli,” Amanda says. “Still doing breakfast?” Felicity bats back with a sneer.
There are lots of new characters, some more successful than others. More men reside in Amandaland (in Motherland, they were mostly noticeable by their absence), but they are less convincingly drawn than the women. Where it’s best is in setting up bog-standard, thoroughly British, inherently absurd scenarios – the car boot sale! The parents’ evening! – in which to carefully insert the characters so everyone reveals their worst side.
Take episode one, when Amanda tries to befriend SoHa lesbian power couple Della (Siobhán McSweeney, in fine brusque fettle) and Fi (Rochenda Sandall) at their house party. Della is the head chef at Shin, the small-plates restaurant beside the megachurch that used to be Debenhams; Fi is worryingly into wicker basketry. Together, they possess an alarmingly relaxed approach to parenting. “I trained in France,” says Della, right before the teenagers get hammered on armagnac and the grownups eat artisan chocolates laced with magic mushrooms in the hot tub. “Oh, I love the whole ‘du pain, du vin, du Boursin’ thang,” Amanda replies.
The gags – about Gloria Hunniford, the Just Seventeen problem page and Sinn Féin – are very British and aimed at a very particular audience, namely strung out middle-aged mums longing to laugh until they wee a bit at jokes about wellness supplements. Too rarely do we get the chance.
Ultimately, though, this is Amanda’s show. Her descent from alpha west London mummy to single mother carrying a mood board on a bike (the Tesla doesn’t make it) to sell waste disposal units is uproarious, but also unexpectedly moving.
This is largely due to Punch’s comic timing and earnest delivery of killer lines such as: “I’m actually reclaiming the word ‘simpleton’.” But it’s also down to the unforgiving terrain of Amandaland, which is to say our land. Amanda may be a narcissistic vortex who has had to invent a new word – “senuous” – to capture her essence, but she is also a mother, who is alone, unmothered, unravelling and yet refusing to loosen her grip on a world designed to break her. And that, tragically and comically, will always be relatable.
• Amandaland airs on BBC One and is available on BBC iPlayer in the UK and on Stan in Australia
