Phillipa Dunne makes the accommodating friend sympathetic without letting us forget her resentment. Her Anne is a firm reason to return to Amandaland, even when the wider ensemble struggles to feel like regular company.
Fi1m perspective
Anne keeps company with a woman who patronises her, and Phillipa Dunne makes that friendship difficult to dismiss in Amandaland (2025). Beside Lucy Punch’s Amanda, she is sympathetic without making the programme a simple contest between a nice woman and a nasty one. There is need on both sides, as well as resentment, and Dunne makes Amanda’s dependence on Anne matter. The friendship gives us a reason to watch Amanda when her snobbery might otherwise be enough reason to stop.
Her screen work grew out of writing and performing with the comedy group Diet of Worms. In The Walshes (2014), she played Carmel Walsh and shared the writing as part of that group. Motherland (2016) brought the breakthrough role of Anne Flynn, while Derry Girls (2018) cast her as Clare’s mother, Geraldine Devlin. Those parts suggest a fairly narrow set of invitations: the mother, the dependable friend, the person who can be relied upon. That is a constraint worth bearing in mind when judging what she does with Anne.
The return to Anne in Amandaland gives that familiar supporting figure a larger place in the comedy. Joanna Lumley’s Felicity helps explain why her daughter Amanda needs approval, while Dunne makes us notice what Amanda expects her friend to put up with. We wanted Anne to find better company, because Dunne makes Amanda’s condescension towards her hard to shrug off. She earns that response without making the friendship seem disposable: we can resent Amanda on Anne’s behalf and still understand why Anne matters to her.
The reservation is about how much those central performances can hold together. The wider group in Amandaland does not feel as readily like regular company as the one in Motherland, despite the supply of jokes. Punch, Lumley and Dunne are stronger reasons to return than the ensemble as a whole, which is a serious limitation in a sitcom. Dunne gives us someone to care about, but she cannot make every other character belong. Start with Amandaland for Dunne, provided spending an evening with Amanda does not require liking her.
Biography
Philippa Dunne is an Irish actress and writer. She trained at the Gaiety School of Acting in Dublin and began her professional career in 2009.
She co-wrote and starred in the RTÉ comedy series The Walshes (2014). Since 2016 she has played Anne Flynn in the BBC sitcom Motherland and its spin-off Amandaland (2025–). Other television roles include Geraldine Devlin in Derry Girls (2018–2022), Ria in This Is Going to Hurt (2022), and appearances in The Nevers (2021), Bodies (2023) and Inside No. 9 (2014). She received a BAFTA nomination for her work in Amandaland.
