--- title: "Motherland" year: 2017 kind: "series" canonical: "https://film.one/tv/motherland-2017" fi1m_score: 74 critics_score: 60 critics_reviews: 7 published: "2026-09-17T19:52:37.495255+00:00" updated: "2026-09-17T19:52:37.907000+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Motherland (2017) Created by Sharon Horgan, Graham Linehan, Holly Walsh, Helen Serafinowicz · 29m · MPA TV-MA · Comedy **Fi1m score: 74** · Critics 60 from 7 reviews *In a sentence:* A class war fought over birthday-party venues, and the only kind person on the battlefield is a man called Kevin > Sharon Horgan, Graham Linehan, Holly Walsh and Helen Serafinowicz’s school-gate sitcom is fast, sour and truthful about the weekly humiliations of raising children while holding down a job. It has no heart to speak of, and it is better for it. ## Synopsis Julia (Anna Maxwell Martin) is a working mother of two in a well-off corner of London whose childcare has just walked out: her own mother, Marion (Ellie Haddington), announces she is no longer available for the school run. Julia’s husband Paul (Oliver Chris) is, as usual, on his way somewhere else. At the school gates Julia finds Amanda (Lucy Punch), queen of the immaculate mothers, with her loyal shadow Anne (Phillipa Dunne), and, on the far side of the playground, the two outcasts who will become her allies: Liz (Diane Morgan), a single mother who has stopped trying, and Kevin (Paul Ready), a stay-at-home father who tries far too hard. Julia wants to keep her job, her children and her dignity, and each half-hour makes her choose which one to drop. ## Review Four writers who between them have made [*Catastrophe*](https://film.one/tv/catastrophe-2015) and *Father Ted* have built a sitcom around the hour of the day that nobody with children enjoys. *Motherland* follows Julia (Anna Maxwell Martin), who has a job, two children, a husband who is mostly a voice on the phone and a mother who has just resigned from unpaid childcare. Each episode runs 29 minutes and none of them wastes one. It is quick, sour and truthful, and it is a good sitcom about parents precisely because it has so little affection for them. The school gate is the arena. Amanda (Lucy Punch) runs it, a woman with a perfect blow-dry and a perfect kitchen who offers help the way other people offer insults, and Punch delivers every line with a smile that arrives half a second before the knife. Anne (Phillipa Dunne) trots behind her, agreeing. Across the playground, Liz (Diane Morgan) has given up on all of it; she smokes, she lets her children run feral, and she says the thing everyone is thinking in the flattest voice on television. Morgan is the show’s secret weapon. Every time the pace threatens to become a headache, she says something short and awful and the episode resets. Julia is harder to love and is not meant to be loved. Maxwell Martin plays her at a permanent low boil, lying to her boss, lying to the school, lying to her children, and treating everyone who tries to help as an obstacle. Several critics found her unbearable. We found her exact. She is what happens when a competent woman is asked to do three jobs and given credit for none, and the show’s refusal to soften her is the bravest thing about it. Paul Ready’s Kevin, the stay-at-home father who wants only to be included, is the one warm body in the cast, and the joke is that his warmth makes him the most irritating person in every room. Oliver Chris plays Julia’s husband Paul as a man who is always about to leave for the airport, and that is roughly all the script gives him. Juliet May directs it fast and close. The camera follows people down hallways and into cars rather than sitting in a living room waiting for them, and Charlie Fawcett cuts scenes off a beat before the reaction, so the laughs pile up rather than land one at a time. Dennis De Groot gives Julia a terraced house that looks like a burglary in progress and Amanda a kitchen you could land a plane in. Caroline Pitcher dresses Amanda in the kind of sportswear nobody sweats in and Julia in the same work outfit she appears to have slept in, which tells you who has help at home and who does not. Here is what we felt. We laughed a great deal, mostly at Morgan and Punch. About once an episode the laugh stopped in our throat, because the scene had stopped exaggerating. Julia hissing at her children through a door while telling a client that everything is fine; Kevin realising, mid-sentence, that none of the mothers has remembered his name; a birthday party that costs a fortune and pleases no one. We recognised all of it, and we did not always enjoy doing so. The flaws are the ones you would expect from a show this fast. Julia’s panic has about three settings, and by the end of a series you have heard all of them. The children are deliberately treated as luggage, which is a good joke in the first series and a slightly hollow one by the third, when we found we wanted the show to care about somebody. Tanya Moodie’s Meg, a new alpha mother who arrives in Series 2, shakes the hierarchy up usefully, but Series 3, an episode shorter than the others, feels thinner and less certain what Julia wants beyond getting through the week. Horgan’s *Catastrophe* let its couple be cruel and still made you hope for them. *Motherland* is not interested in hope. It takes the school-gate world at its own valuation, in which everyone is judging everyone and the only prize is a slightly better parking space. That makes it less lovable and, to our mind, more useful. Watch it two episodes at a time. Any more than that and Julia’s panic stops being funny and starts being yours, which the show would probably take as a compliment. *Fi1m score 74, published 17 September 2026.* ## What the critics say Most critics come down in favour of Motherland, though not by a wide margin. The praise clusters on its accuracy: the reviews agree it captures the panic and vertigo of early parenthood closely enough to be uncomfortable, and several treat that discomfort as the point. The cynicism is the other thing admired, with the school-gate politics, the performative alpha mothers and the slacker mum Liz singled out, and the children kept firmly as props rather than cute distractions. Its refusal of sentiment is repeatedly held up against softer family sitcoms. The spread is wide rather than narrow, with nobody sitting in the middle. The dissenters, all American, find the same qualities exhausting: The Hollywood Reporter calls it forced and frantic, IndieWire finds the chaos taxing rather than funny, and Paste faults a clueless, unlikeable lead and misses the warmth of Catastrophe. The British reviews are the warm ones, which may say something about who recognises these mothers. ### Reviews we read (7) - **The i Paper**, Sarah Carson (★★★★): The series captures the vivid stress of parenting so accurately it can be hard to watch, but its spiky, cynical observations of school-gate dynamics and performative mums remain sharp and superb. [Read](https://inews.co.uk/culture/television/motherland-series-2-review-bbc-stress-difficult-to-watch-348002) - **Vulture**, Matt Zoller Seitz (80/100, inferred): The critic praises the series for capturing the vertigo-inducing days of early parenthood with energy, audacity, and style, calling it an impressive and fun show. [Read](https://www.vulture.com/2018/05/motherland-review.html) - **Radio Times**, David Butcher (70/100, inferred): The chaotic, clear-eyed sitcom returns with its familiar middle-class parenting trials; its trump card is a vein of cynicism best embodied by slacker-mum Liz, and the new alpha-mother creates beautifully observed wrongness. [Read](https://www.radiotimes.com/programme/b-n6pztg/motherland-season-2/?episode=b-04ny7t) - **The Guardian** (70/100, inferred): The critic praises the series for its unsparing, funny take on the chaos of motherhood and working parents, contrasting it favorably with sentimental sitcoms. Children are treated as props rather than cute characters, and the adult characters' unlikeability is seen as exhilarating. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/nov/04/motherland-vision-child-rearing-panic-inducingly-scary) - **IndieWire**, Ben Travers (40/100, inferred): The critic finds the series an accurate but taxing glimpse at motherhood that creates more unbearable chaos than empathy or humor from its never-ending toils. [Read](https://www.indiewire.com/criticism/shows/sharon-horgan-motherland-review-mothers-day-1201962277/) - **The Hollywood Reporter**, Tim Goodman (40/100, inferred): The series misses the comedy mother lode because it is too forced and frantic, relying on heightened, predictable parenting clichés and unlikeable characters despite some funny parts and strong performances. [Read](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-reviews/motherland-review-1109240/) - **Paste**, Amy Amatangelo (6.9): The critic finds the show relatable in its depiction of harried motherhood and one-liners but faults the protagonist for being overly clueless and unlikeable, lacking the heart of similar series like Catastrophe. [Read](https://www.pastemagazine.com/tv/motherland/motherland-sharon-horgan-sundance-now-review) ## Details - **Created by:** Sharon Horgan, Graham Linehan, Holly Walsh, Helen Serafinowicz - **Creator:** Sharon Horgan, Graham Linehan, Holly Walsh, Helen Serafinowicz - **Director:** Juliet May - **Writer:** Graham Linehan, Sharon Horgan, Holly Walsh, Helen Serafinowicz - **Editor:** Charlie Fawcett - **Production design:** Dennis De Groot - **Costume design:** Caroline Pitcher - **Cast:** Anna Maxwell Martin as Julia; Diane Morgan as Liz; Paul Ready as Kevin; Lucy Punch as Amanda; Phillipa Dunne as Anne; Oliver Chris as Paul; Ellie Haddington as Marion; Tanya Moodie as Meg - **Runtime:** 29m - **Certificate (MPA):** TV-MA - **Release (the US):** 7 November 2017 - **Genres:** Comedy - **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvwkLrcNv1Q ## Where to watch in the US - BritBox: streaming, hd - Amazon Prime Video: free - Amazon Prime Video: add-on - The Roku Channel: add-on, hd - Apple TV: add-on, hd - Amazon Prime Video: buy, hd - Apple TV: buy, sd *Checked 2026-09-17.* Also available in: AU, CA, ES, FI, FR, GB, IE, NZ, SE, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## If you liked this - *Catastrophe* (2015): Horgan’s other parents, just as rude, but this time you are allowed to hope for them. - *The Letdown* (2017): Australian new-mother comedy with the same exhaustion and a good deal more tenderness. - *Better Things* (2016): A single mother in Los Angeles, three daughters, and no interest in being liked either. - *Pulling* (2006): Horgan before children: three women behaving badly in Penge, sharply written and unsentimental. - *Tully* (2018): Charlize Theron as a mother past breaking point; funnier and stranger than it sounds. --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/tv/motherland-2017