Katie Law Back at the school gates, the cliquey, competitive mums are hard at work
Motherland: Series Two. Episode One: No Mum Left Behind
BBC2, 10pm
ONE of the great joys of being older is no longer having to hang out at the school gates. The inane conversations and sheer competitiveness between middle-class mums (it was always the mums, not the dads, vying to outdo each other) over who was more stressed out, or whose child had got the lead role in the nativity play, would send me running to work as soon as the children were in the playground.
Motherland takes this all-too-familiar territory and turns it into a sitcom — a kind of homegrown, low-budget version of Big Little Lies — with some sly social commentary on what mothers should and shouldn’t aspire to, and how fathers should and shouldn’t behave. Written by Sharon Horgan, Holly Walsh, Helen Linehan and Barunka O’Shaughnessy, this second series opens with the start of the new school term, as frantic mother-of-two Julia (Anna Maxwell-Martin) goes in search of a pair — any pair — of black school shoes for her daughter Ivy, and leaves the shop with Ivy click-clacking down the pavement in kitten heels.
Cut to the school gates, where Julia’s parent clique includes shallow, bitchy Amanda (Lucy Punch), gobby single Liz (Diane “Philomena Cunk” Morgan) and remedially woke Kevin (played with cringe-making credibility by Paul Ready). The new mum on the block is Meg (Tanya Moodie), who immediately puts Julia’s back up because she can juggle five children with a high-powered job. Moodie plays her as obnoxious, patronising and competent. When Julia complains to Liz about Meg, she is chided for being unfeminist. “No, it’s unfeminist of her!” retorts Julia. “I thought we all agreed, as feminists, that nowadays it’s unfeminist to have it all”. So much then, for success and the sisterhood.
By contrast, Kevin has got the life/ work balance just right, with his new beta job at soft play centre Kiddiverse. “It’s really great: part-time so that I can drop off the kids, a very average wage so Jill doesn’t feel threatened, free eye tests, the whole package, really.” But is it? The trouble is that in the new order, where dads have to reprogramme themselves to be more like mums, things can go awry. As Kevin walks into a café to join the other mums he accidentally brushes Meg’s breast. “Well, excuse me, Mr Weinstein!” she quips.
And later, when he leans in to kiss her on the cheek and she accidentally-on-purpose kisses him on the lips, he goes into meltdown. “Did you see what happened?” he whimpers to Liz. “Oh My God. What am I going to do? Should I apologise? It’s a tricky time, culturally, post-hashtag.” It sure is, especially when Meg’s teenage stepdaughter appears in a skimpy outfit.
This is all clearly intended to be hilarious — series one was a big hit — but surely to degrade men quite like this, or to demean career mothers who have succeeded, isn’t really a laughing matter. Or perhaps it is.