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HALLELUJAH, Amanda’s back! In an ironic twist the school-gate mum we all love to hate has triumphed over the other mums from BBC comedy Motherland to nab a show of her own. There won’t be a fourth run of the BAFTA-winning series cocreated by Sharon Horgan; instead, the broadcaster announced this week that Amandaland, a six-parter starring Lucy Punch as the deliciously unlikeable Queen Bee, will be honed by the same team.
I can’t wait, because it looks like irritating Amanda is set for one of the best redemption arcs in TV comedy. Her seemingly perfect life is in tatters – which pleases all of us who’ve fallen prey to her type, especially during the hideous fever dream that is World Book Day when your child is dressed as a ghost (old sheet, three holes) and hers has come as every character from 101
Dalmatians. A Queen Bee mum once told me, ‘You’d never know you worked in fashion from what you wear at drop-off.’ I was editor of Elle magazine at the time and it nibbled at my confidence for a while.
In the show, snobbish show-off Amanda is a new divorcée having to rely heavily on ‘Gan-Gan’, her critical mother played by Joanna Lumley. She’s forced to downsize – a word that strikes fear into the heart of every middle-class narcissist judging the size of kitchen islands. Her two children are now teenagers and, as any mum of adolescents will attest, it is a savage and brutal time.
I felt Amanda’s character was a clichéridden nightmare in season one of Motherland but, by season three, she’d evolved into a complex cliché – and, for me, the most interesting woman on screen. I hated her monstrous delusions of grandeur but also secretly admired her. I started to feel sorry for her; all that wine-gulping sadness and repressed sexuality (Kevin, how
