Motherland

If spending Christmas with the family fills you with stress, Motherland's seasonal special – rightly promoted to BBC One from its normal BBC Two home – is ...

While Marion is tough and distant, Amanda (Lucy Punch’s) mum Felicity is a grade-A bitch, with Joanna Lumley relishing every moment to play up the heartless villain with one savagely pointed line after another. Ultimately this mismatched bunch, acquainted only through an accident of their children’s shared schooling, realise that they actually have a valuable friendship after all. Of all the suburban parents, Anna Maxwell Martin’s Julia is highly strung at the best of times, taking on every responsibility for her family’s happiness, not that they care.

“It's the busiest day of the year for ambulances,” explained the ever-helpful Kevin in the Motherland Christmas Special (BBC Two). “You've got your suicides ...

Meanwhile, alpha mum Amanda (Lucy Punch) spent the day with her smug ex, his secretly pregnant new wife and her pass-agg mother, Felicity (Joanna Lumley, revelling in her villainy). Good luck with your own event meal and try not to overload the ambulances. She’d invited Kevin (Paul Ready) – always the most devoted mum in Motherland – to save him from the fellow divorced dads at the local Ibis hotel, aka The Abyss. Here she – along with co-writers Holly Walsh, Helen Serafinowicz and Barunka O'Shaughnessy – repeated the trick in a skilfully paced half-hour which became genuinely affecting in the home stretch. Then you’ve got your knife wounds, your alcohol poisoning and your burns, not to mention your pre-existing medical conditions.” Cheers, Kev. “You’ve got your suicides, your hypothermia and your overeating.

Lucy Punch and Anna Maxwell Martin had us in stitches one moment and tears the next. Motherland: Last Christmas,23-12-2022,Kevin (PAUL READY) Paul Ready as Kevin, Anna Maxwell Martin as Julia ...

This was some of the most efficient comedy writing on television, and not a moment was wasted. She rescued Kevin from his bleak hotel room but with the ulterior motive that he’d cook the dinner – a Persian feast, naturally – while she became ever more exasperated with her demanding in-laws, cranky mother and spectacularly selfish husband who spent most of the day building an outdoor cryo-pool ice bath that was definitely not “for the whole family” as he had claimed. And so, back to the suburban hellscape of

Anna Maxwell Martin is back on our screens for the one-off Christmas Special of the roaringly successful BBC sitcom Motherland. The 44-year-old star plays ...

Rumours that Line of Duty - in which Maxwell Martin plays DCS Patricia Carmichael - is returning for a " surprise" seventh series in 2023 have also surfaced, although it has not been commented on by the BBC. The episode will be available to stream on BBC iPlayer afterwards. But co-star Tanya Moodie, who plays Meg, previously said this year that the cast had their "fingers crossed" for a comeback. With her daughters now aged 13 and 11, she has said she will make her next big career move "soon". Despite these setbacks, Maxwell Martin was said to have come achingly close to landing a role in a Coen brothers film while aged in her twenties. Maxwell Martin came from a modest background, attending the comprehensive Beverley High School, and had to build herself from the ground up rather than relying on nepotism. “Then my personal life took over," she said, referring to the birth of her two daughters with film director Roger Michell. I mean everyone is kind of gunning for it, so yeah. However, filming has not been announced. In 2022, she also played tough-as-boots MI5 debriefer Lily Taylor for the She explained that, when she was younger and much less experienced at acting, she feared not having enough "chutzpah". Maxwell Martin said she always wanted to have her children and "wouldn’t have sacrificed that" for her career.

This special edition of Sharon Horgan's BBC One comedy is perfect in every way, save for the fact that it is only half an hour long.

Amanda (Lucy Punch) is to spend a “blended family” Christmas with her ex, his new wife, Tamara, and her endlessly castigatory mother, Felicity (Joanna Lumley), who has dressed Amanda’s children like “minor royals” for the day, and has taken to referring to herself as their “Gan Gan”. But these are also words that might help a person to win the meat raffle of life; words that should probably be applied, in the broadest sense, to absolutely everything, all the time. Every time a character swigs the Baileys – across the road from Julia, Meg (Tanya Moodie), does this with particular aplomb, pulling at the bottle as if it was the Key to All Mythologies in liquid form – it’s all I can do not to cheer. When Liz (Diane Morgan) reveals in the opening scene of Motherland: Last Christmas that her ex has “won the meat raffle” and will, as a result, be hosting the big day for her and the children, it is a portent straight out of the pages of Thomas Hardy. For the lover of all things festive, this episode of Sharon Horgan and co’s exquisitely written show comes with a moment of pure sentiment, one that is beautifully done: here is A Christmas Carol for the Mumsnet generation, starring Julia as Ebenezer Scrooge (though she wears a furry onesie rather than a long nightshirt). – I think the Motherland Christmas special is perfect in every way save for the fact that it is only half an hour long.

From Amanda showing up in the same dress as Johnny's new wife, to Liz buying emergency Christmas Calippos, to Kevin dropping his boreki all over the floor, the ...

This was some of the most efficient comedy writing on television, and not a moment was wasted. She rescued Kevin from his bleak hotel room but with the ulterior motive that he’d cook the dinner – a Persian feast, naturally – while she became ever more exasperated with her demanding in-laws, cranky mother and spectacularly selfish husband who spent most of the day building an outdoor cryo-pool ice bath that was definitely not “for the whole family” as he had claimed. And so, back to the suburban hellscape of