TV has never been so nerve-jangling: 10 years of the agonising Motherland

The rage, the wine, the power mums, the PTA horror – the BBC sitcom was a spot on send-up of life at the school gates. A decade on, we remember its most awkward bits

If Uncut Gems was about the school run instead of gambling debts, it would look like Motherland. It is now 10 years since the BBC sitcom jangled the already frayed nerves of all parents watching and turned Anna Maxwell Martin into the most frazzled woman on television in the name of skewering middle-class motherhood.

Whether she was marching her children to buy school shoes the night before term started (“Don’t be closed. Pleeeeeaaaaase don’t be closed”) or having a meltdown at temporary traffic lights en route to a school drop-off that proved redundant because she’d forgotten it was half-term, Maxwell Martin’s Julia would undoubtedly have a more chilled-out time in the kitchen of The Bear than raising her kids.

Originally created by Sharon Horgan, Holly Walsh, Helen Serafinowicz and Graham Linehan (with Barunka O’Shaughnessy joining from series two, after Linehan departed), Motherland arrived into a TV landscape where mothers were no longer images of parenting perfection. But while the likes of Malcolm in the Middle and Outnumbered had embraced the humour in the warts and all of child-rearing, the experience of mothering on television was still mostly centred on the kids themselves: tantrumming toddlers, precocious primary schoolers and stroppy teenagers.

Motherland took a different tack. It was never about the offspring, who rarely amounted to more than the occasional school uniform bobbing into view (rare is a Motherland fan who can name all – or indeed any – of the sprogs). Instead, it was more like a workplace comedy, focusing on the adult experience of motherhood: the passive aggression, the barely disguised competition, the begged-for favours, the ulterior motives, the whingeing and the copious bottles of wine. While it had been considered progress to see women on television who were more than just mothers, Motherland acknowledged an uncomfortable truth: that the mothering bit can really take over, at least for a while there. That being a mother sometimes – often – feels like a constant fight against being flattened into two dimensions.

Alongside Maxwell Martin’s perma-stressed Julia was unflappable Liz (Diane Morgan), token dad Kevin (Paul Ready), long-suffering Anne (Philippa Dunne) and Amanda (Lucy Punch), a vividly heinous alpha-mum creation who always saw herself as the centre of the universe and now literally is, in spin-off Amandaland. The series two introduction of Meg (Tanya Moodie), a high-flying Black woman who appeared to have it all together, gave us a more diverse group but Motherland was carefully hyper-specific to its well-off west London demographic. The horrors here took place at interminable PTA fundraisers, joylessly non-competitive sports days and skin-crawling swimming pool birthday parties (devastatingly, not a drop-off situation).

In Motherland, panic rises faster than house prices in a good school catchment area, and there is always someone to witness you making a colossal balls-up such as panicking about forgetting World Book Day and sending your child in holding an umbrella … as the novel Umbrella by Will Self. Obviously.

The show gamely took on the utter weirdness of mother-to-mother relations: attempting variously to bond with, impress and one-up a group of people who just happen to have given birth around the same time as you. The thwarted efforts to join carpools and get your kids into after-school clubs, all the while doing just enough to appease this gaggle of onlookers eager to judge (if only to convince themselves they are doing OK).

Amanda may be the obvious villain, but Motherland never stopped reminding us that motherhood will, at times, make sinners of us all. Having children does not suddenly wash away our foibles; if anything, it probably magnifies them. Motherland understood that being a mother frequently involves your spirit hovering somewhere above your body, watching yourself mutter Latin gibberish in an attempt to get your kids into a Catholic school, and silently screaming: “How did it come to this?”

As the series progressed and the bonds formed at the school gates transitioned into real friendships, the stakes got higher. But Motherland never lost sight of the relentless nature of parenthood: even as divorce, illness and death reared their heads, lunches still had to be packed (and probably left at home).

It’s a show that really should have had parents diving for the remote rather than spend their evenings reliving a hellish half-term cottage break or attempting to curb a nit epidemic. As Julia hissed when she ended up back at Anne’s house for an afterparty (a special bottle of cava and some dubious homemade paté): “This is my worst nightmare come true – surrounded by mums at night.”

But while it’s too close to the bone to be a comfort watch, sitting down in front of Motherland is an act of catharsis – a reassurance that even when you’re trying really really hard, you still might lose someone else’s child while trick-or-treating. If you no longer identify as a Carrie or a Samantha, perhaps being a Liz or a Kevin feels more appropriate.

It stands up as a triumphantly messy monument to a stage of life that passes in a blur of doctor’s appointments and sponsored bike rides and forgotten swimming kits. Less laugh till you cry and more laugh to stop yourself crying, Motherland holds out a hand to mothers watching. Not to help, of course, but to cling on to across a pub table as you try to fathom how on earth you’ve agreed to sort out the collection for the school’s poorly caretaker.