Review of the comedy's festive special

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 only likely to exacerbate it. Watch through your fingers as its flawed, borderline unlikeable characters are humanised by being put through the wringer by truly awful relatives.

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. Christmas seems unlikely to be a season of good cheer when her husband is singularly self-obsessed, mum Marion is an ‘ungrateful old cabbage’ and her in-laws are congenitally lazy (and flatulent). No wonder she seems one broken fairy light away from a full-blown breakdown.

She also takes in wet blanket Kevin (Paul Ready) for Christmas Day, after learning he’d otherwise be spending a bleak time with the other  divorced dads at the Ibis. Diane Morgan’s witheringly cynical Liz calling it ‘The Abyss’ is both a brilliant gag and the sort of line to get the hotel’s marketing team in a tizz, lest it sticks.

Meanwhile Liz is lumbered with a feckless husband – not just sitcom useless, but a genuine piece of shit – which means she ends up at the now open-house party, too, to save another ruined Christmas.

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.  Having a ‘blended family’ Christmas with Amanda’s ex-husband and his new wife only gives Felicity a bigger audience to publicly twist the knife in scenes that have you squirming in sympathy even for the shallow, image-obsessed Amanda.

Meanwhile, Meg (Tanya Moodie) is – true to form – drunk before Elevenses while Anne  (Philippa Dunne)  couldn’t be happier with her massive Irish family party. No wonder she’s barely seen this episode, ‘fun’ is not Motherland’s driving force.

Writers Sharon Horgan, Holly Walsh, Helen Serafinowicz and Barunka O’Shaughnessy prefer the agonising farce of throwing metaphorical rocks at their characters, who try to hold on to their sanity as circumstances collapse around then.A lot of plot ground – including one major bombshell – is covered in this brisk half-hour, while the script is rich with astringent one-liners.

But there’s some heart too. 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. What a nice surprise that a warming sentiment can push through all Motherland’s delicious cynicism.

Review date: 23 Dec 2022
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett