Motherland

I’ve been doing some parenting recently.  Well, I held a friend’s baby for about half an hour while she had a crème brûlée (the mum, not the three-month-old).  Despite not having procreated, I was fairly confident I could keep the young lad content with my impressive jiggling skills, honed over a decade ago when I was a quaternary caregiver to my niece.  A couple of times however, I could sense his bottom lip quiver, his copious cheeky cheeks redden and his little face screw up in unhappiness, prompting me to adopt a new position to distract him from any number of distress sources: hunger, overheating, a soiled gusset, boredom with the view.  When the moment came, I was fairly satisfied to be handing him back over, even if the girls had commented that his 6.5kg of weight had leant my biceps an alluring bulge.  If I factor up the duration of that brief stint of (quite literally) baby sitting to a week, I have to multiply its difficulty by 336, and if we go all the way to the eighteenth birthday at which point I assume you turf your progeny out into the street and cut them off from the family fortune, that’s a total of 314,496 units of parenting.  In short: child-rearing is hard.  And as the owner of a phallus, I’ve got the easy end of the stick, as it were.  Motherhood is hardest of all.  Here, then, is the hilarious truth that forms the comedic backbone to BBC sitcom, Motherland, whose achievements we will be celebrating today.

Too millennial ever to be aware of what’s scheduled on the actual TV, I was only vaguely conscious of Motherland’s two series when they first went out, catching glimpses whenever the real telly came when switching from Netflix to Amazon Prime.  I knew one of its creators was Sharon Horgan, who had co-created Catastrophe, and again, following my nose in working out why people on podcasts like a thing, I finally plumped to dive in after spotting Motherland’s first series appear on Netflix, before eventually tracking down the second on iPlayer.  I was craving the wit and cynicism of British humour after having so many glossy American boxsets in recent rotation: Power, Watchmen and, er, Love Island USA.  The situation is suburban London and the comedy is balancing childcare, a career, a relationship, and, worst of all, other mums, so let’s meet the mothers of this land:

Julia

The master of the fake smile, Julia covers up each episode’s mounting shower of disasters with a suitably correlating uptick in false cheerfulness, effectively using effusive exclamations to paper over cracks in her best-laid plans until she ultimately breaks down in ranting and raving.  We cross our fingers and toes that she will catch a break, but she’s ever thwarted by each element of what should be her support structure: her husband would help but he has to play golf with the lads, her mother would help but she’s entitled to enjoy her retirement, the other mums would help but they’re busy forming a sort of mummy Mean Girls (mean mums?) at the local café, consigning Julia to the table by the toilets.  A career in PR only makes matters worse, as it does most things, but it’s the people Julia meets at that lavatory-adjacent table who finally offer help.

Liz

The queen of laid-back parenting, Liz has had to develop more extreme coping strategies as a single mum.  Her seemingly thick skin places her well to encourage Julia to be less anxious, though Liz does herself later struggle with pushchair extraction when her youngest finally abandons her for nursery.  Life’s too short not to cut corners, and that time saved is better spent having a cheeky drink anyway.

Kevin

Yes, it’s a man, but Kevin is perhaps the mumsiest of all.  Contrasting with Liz’s workaround and make-do methods, Kevin is not happy unless he is out-parenting left, right and centre.  Desperate for the approval of the other mums, he volunteers for every PTA gig going, yet fails to find the acceptance he yearns for.  Mostly seen in a cagoule, his highlights are his throwaway lines about never-seen wife Gill as it’s clear to everyone but him that his approach to parenting makes her skin crawl.  Yes, Kevin is cloying, but his heart’s in the right place, and his very inclusion provides a spirited commentary on gender roles for those that are looking to find one.  Otherwise he’s a silly sausage in a bicycle helmet.

Amanda (not Mandy)

With her expensively coiffured blonde hair and yoga-taught frame, Amanda is the alpha-mummy whose every utterance either allows her to show off (less of the humble, more of the brag) or serves as a backhander to put down the other mums around her.  For some reason, I love her.

Anne

My favourite mum.  She begins as one of many flunkies to Amanda’s act as chief mum, but soon accumulates enough scene-stealing lines to guarantee belly laughs so loud that you can only hope you’re giving your neighbours a taste of their own medicine for all those lockdown reggaeton parties you’ve endured.  She’s a cautious parent, convinced all adults are out to molest or poison her offspring, which makes trick or treating challenging.  Her wardrobe malfunction at a swimming pool party and her poor management of her own IBS during a weekend away in half term both endear her further to me.

The second series also sees the introduction of Meg, a hard-partying, hard-working mum who hasn’t got time for any of your nonsense, unless it involves being abusive on night buses.  I can’t work out what they’ve been trying to do with her beyond address a lack of diversity but it’s great to have her along.  Let’s say she is wonderfully complex.

On the other hand, the kids rarely merit any significant characterisation and this is, again, because they don’t really matter.  The humour is brittle and acidic when it comes to deploring the role of modern working mums, running households, keeping everyone happy, sacrificing their interests and yet still being expected to knock up a harvest festival costume at a moment’s notice.  They’ve been told they can have it all, but yet somehow it feels like having nothing.  The swimming pool party episode illustrates this perfectly when Julia, hair done and posh outfit selected for a career-important work do, is strong-armed into in-pool supervision that leaves her showing up later at her function as drowned as a rat.  We laugh because it’s true, but as I recovered from each chortle, I had to check my childless male privilege lest I feel hopeless about a status quo whose imbalance looms large in daily lives.  Motherland’s comedy comes from its universal truth, but I’m sure we could find something else to laugh about if gender inequality no longer existed.

Catastrophe

It’s easy to feel like your life is a mess.  Maybe you’re not where you thought you would be by this age.  Maybe your social channels lead you to believe that your lifestyle is not as enviable as your friends’.  Maybe it seems like everyone you know is desperately repopulating the earth with constant progeny whose names you’ll never really be arsed to learn while you’re channelling your energies into writing an unpopular blog about your views on recent TV shows you have been watching.  Well, have I got the show for you!  This week, we are doing Catastrophe.  I had somehow completely missed this show’s existence, yet became conscious of the appearances of creators Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaney as separate guests on a number of different podcasts whose back catalogues I am working through while sitting on buses wondering how far I can let my nose peak out of my facemask before someone scowls at me.

But there it was one evening on my unnavigable Amazon Prime EPG, drawing me in during one spare half hour before bedtime.  The comedy-drama’s origins arise in a business travel fling conducted between Delaney’s Rob Norris, our American in London, and Horgan’s Sharon Morris, our Irish fortysomething single lady at home in the capital.  Norris returns to the States, but Morris has conceived a baby and it’s this mini Norris-Morris that forces Sharon and Rob to upheave their whole lives while they work out what to do next.  Can a brief affair last for four hilarious and poignant series while Sharon and Rob repeatedly end up almost self-sabotaging their own happiness?  Well, yes.

Despite originating on opposite sides of the Atlantic, Rob and Sharon’s shared sense of humour unites them into a lasting bond which neither of their respective misdemeanours ever successfully ruptures, though you repeatedly worry each time that this will surely be the end.  Trading affectionate insults while scraping back the fanciful façade in which so many marriages shroud themselves for palatable public consumption, we’re shown a truthful relationship awash with painfully raw honesty, yet still dogged with sufficient dishonesty to engender tension.  We never shy away from the blood, sweat and tears required to keep things going.  At first, I found the bickering difficult, unused as I was to such harsh storytelling.  I couldn’t hook myself into a likeability anchor with any of the main characters.  But as time progresses and the Catastrophisers grow more familiar, a familiarity develops, and you become equally invested in their happiness.  And with this comes even greater laughs – by the end of the fourth season I was disturbing my neighbours with my chortles.  Well, I imagined I was, but one was probably screaming into his headset while playing computer games and the folk upstairs were having another lockdown party with reggaeton dancing.

Most importantly, nothing is overly dramatised.  Rob’s own struggle with alcoholism in particular, while blowing up rather climactically, progresses there with a believability that makes it all the more horrific.  In short, everyone is struggling, including Rob and Sharon’s own family and friends.  Extras’ Ashley Jensen is worth her weight in gold as Fran, Sharon’s old friend who’s on call with a passive-aggressive comment at every juncture, until her own life starts to fall apart thanks to husband Chris or precocious actor son Jeffrey.  Sharon’s brother persists in being a hot mess throughout proceedings while Rob’s own friends and colleagues veer from one crisis to the next.  It’s probably only occasional babysitter Anna (played by Misfits’ goddess Lauren Socha) who has her life most on track, simply because she’s too laid back to care.  Or too young.

Storylines scatter and scarper, but, throughout, the kids are refreshingly ignored.  Rob and Sharon’s growing brood rarely come to centre stage, unless the plot requires them to bite someone or to have a name that’s difficult to pronounce.  This is about how hard it is to be an adult, a parent, a person.  The kids have it easy and are therefore not of interest.  Catastrophe’s episodes thus became essential comfort, four sets of six charming half hours to enjoy in the bath or at the end of a long day trapped inside.  The wit zips along with intelligence, anything generic is jettisoned and we’re left with a perfect balance of pure enjoyment and tempering miserable realism.  Any show that fails to acknowledge life is disastrous will ring hollow after Catastrophe, so you might as well view it yourself in order to distract from the terrible mess you have made of things.

Power

In and amongst the various quality boxsets (Watchmen) and trash series (Love Island USA) I might have on the go at any one time, there’s always a background show that I’m getting through at a more leisurely pace.  For the last one hundred years, this has been Power.  I forget when I finally relented to Netflix’s constant algorithmic suggestion that this was a show I might enjoy, but somehow I’ve got through its six series of at least ten (sometimes fifteen) one-hour episode.  Let’s be clear: I’m here to say I’m a fan of Power.  But, crikey, it’s been some tough going.  How easily and how often I’ve been distracted by shinier (Euphoria), cleverer (I May Destroy You) programming.

Firstly, let’s categorise the show.  It belongs in a group that I have previously christened: a whole lot of f*cking.  Alongside Elite and, let’s be honest, Game Of Thrones, Power viewing comes with the risk of sudden sexually explicit antics filling your screen.  Episode one barely throws out a few establishing shots before our sexy leads are not just cavorting in their marital bed, but properly having a right old go at some serious slap and tickle (I definitely heard scrotal slapping).  You don’t need to use your imagination, because nothing is left to it, but you might want to ensure your 55” telly screen isn’t overlooked by neighbours with young children and you haven’t yet sorted out curtains for your floor-to-ceiling French windows.

So, who are these people whose close-up intercourse is essential to the plot development?  Power is all about James “Jamie” St. Patrick, an NYC kid from the wrong side of the tracks who, after amassing a fortune from large-scale drug dealing, is trying to turn himself into a legitimate businessman.  Played by the exquisitely goateed Omari Hardwick, this is a character we root for no matter what terrible things he does, clothed or otherwise.  And if he happens to interpret legitimate business as opening up seedy nightclubs that are dogged by violent crime, then so be it.  What we rarely see Jamie doing is going to the gym, despite the fact he is stacked beyond all belief.  There’s some intense jogging in early seasons and he does visit a prison weights room later on (albeit briefly and bloodily), but I find it hard to believe he’s not constantly repping out some big lifts and counting his macros, in between trimming his beard, dealing drugs, shooting people, surveying his night club from a raised walkway or being an absolute sod to his long-suffering wife, Tasha, (Naturi Naughton).

Tasha St. Patrick is the heart of the show, often called upon to channel her inner boss to protect her family (with mixed success) or to ward off threats.  She and Jamie are often found in their swanky penthouse where the lift opens straight into the lounge, and it’s here they’re often visited by our third lead and Jamie’s childhood BFF, Tommy Egan.  I vowed I would never troll anyone on this blog, but Joseph Sikora is the hammiest actor I have ever seen.  It takes a real scenery-chewer to know one, so we can accept this is coming from a place of being a ham on stage myself, but you eventually develop a charmed affection for his idiosyncrasies – he is simply another layer of camp in the outrageous proceedings that almost never seem to end.

As we’ve noted before (Narcos, Narcos:Mexico) a career in drugs can be a touch stressful – I don’t think they even get to work from home during lockdown.  Drama dogs Tommy and Jamie at every step, with each season introducing a new array of dastardly dealers looking to steal their patches, take their connects and generally indulge in anti-competitive business practices.  Instead of litigation, recourse is taken rather to ultra-violence, with the body count exceeded only by the nudity count.  Whenever a fresh character is introduced, you’re hard pushed to guess whether they’ll die before they get naked or get naked before they die, or do both at the same time by dying naked.  As a homebody, the worst part about their chosen industry is the constant galivanting about town.  The endless texts and calls between the characters predominantly showcase them demanding to meet each other in person all over New York.  Once you factor in a journey time of more than 45 minutes each way then suddenly the millions of pounds earned from selling cocaine to yuppies don’t seem worth it at all, and that’s before the FBI start tailing you.

Despite being sexy and sleek, a certain bleakness with Power can take things out of you.  Sure it’s a banging soundtrack that accompanies the, er, banging, but everyone behaves like angry children and it can only really go round in circles as they cross, double-cross, triple-cross and shoot at each other.  It’s made me want to go back to New York, but I’m not currently allowed in case I bring the sniffles with me there or take it back with me afterwards.  For fans of 50 Cent, you’ve got 50 Cent, so I suppose that’s something, as he really does play an absolute shit.  Most galling for me was, being very close to the end, I inadvertently caught an advert for the spin-off series which spoiled the ending of Power completely, so all the hours of viewing became slightly redundant, resulting only in these few hundred words of poorly structured prose.  I’m about to search for GIFs to pepper in here and I’m a touch afraid about what I’ll see but, assuming you’re not pulling together an indulgent blog on your viewing experience, you can’t go wrong with a bit of Power’s sexy gangster mayhem.  And with Lockdown Two ruining lives near you soon, you’ll have plenty of time to get through it all.

Love Island USA

In a roller coaster year of dizzying highs and terrifying lows, I’m going to point the finger at ITV2 for being both the cause of and the solution to a large number of these peaks and troughs.  As we all know, the calendar year is built around Love Island.  Normally those wonderful weeks of coupling up each night with an hour of guaranteed good telly (apart from the oddly unengaging Saturday night highlights/unseen shows) synchronise with our British summers of torrential downpours and sticky sticky heatwaves (both of which give everyone a first-hand experience of our climate crisis future), but 2020 got off to a great start with an absolute glut of Majorcan madness thanks to the inaugural series of winter Love Island.

But then, as we all know, pandemic pandemonium took hold and nobody knew how to make a show about cracking on if contestants had to remain two metres apart, not to mention the indecipherable lottery that foreign travel had become.  With a shrug, the whole series was cancelled and my life was ruined.  Then, it was divulged there would be no further winter edition in 2021, meaning it was over a year till the next UK series.  I can cope with supermarket queues and remote working under the threat of redundancy, but this was a major gut punch.  Naturally, I blamed Boris.  Naturally, he blamed immigration.  Surely Love Island 2020 could go ahead if everyone claimed they were testing their eyesight?

ITV redeemed themselves by screening Love Island Australia and, even though it was an old series, it was the vape to the cigarette of my Love Island addiction.  But then someone had the bright idea of taking Love Island USA and giving it to us in real time, allowing a glorious watch-along with our American brethren – it turns out our special relationship extends beyond a catastrophic covid response and being led by privileged petulant blonde fatties.  Of course, I stopped for half a second to wonder how on earth the States were going to run a reality dating show which involves the liberal exchanging of bodily fluids (orally, mostly) in the midst of a world health emergency.

Apparently, the islanders quarantined before entering the villa, ensuring a negative test for the virus.  More importantly, while a luxury island was out of the question, the perfect solution was found in a Las Vegas rooftop.  Offering hot weather and the constant background hum of downtown traffic (interspersed with sirens), the producers had struck gold.  In fact, so much of Love Island’s much-needed escapism comes from its almost complete refusal to engage with the outside world.  There were some initial comments about lockdown, but our couples soon became the truly insular islanders we would expect.  Sure, we’re all sick of corona, but the absence of a single mention of Black Lives Matter among a group of diverse young people seems like a missed opportunity.  Even Justine opening up about her family’s time in a Kenyan refugee camp barely warranted more than a few seconds of screen time when I could happily have watched a one-hour special on the subject.

But, if to Love-Island is to act as if the outside world doesn’t matter, then this series of Love Island USA is serving up pure escapism with our perception of reality deliberately removed.  The pandemic doesn’t matter.  The centuries of racial oppression don’t matter.  The climate crisis doesn’t matter.  All that matters is finding a boyfriend or a girlfriend, as being single is the greatest travesty of all.  But, whereas 2019’s season of Love Island USA made the competition to couple up all too obvious, taking the more American approach to reality TV (ruthless game-planning), this new version has realised that a lot of the format’s charm lies in sticking closely to the silliness of the UK original.  At last, we have an irreverent voiceover, mocking every single thing our island young folk get up to.  A glamorous host wonders in on the odd occasion with bad news.  People shout out “got a text!”  The ridiculous challenges have been shipped over and acted out blow by blow (literally), while Casa Amor was a resounding triumph, descending quickly into explosive orgiastic debauchery and creating great telly.  I shall hand it to the Americans – they are TV naturals.  Unlike the Brits, they take themselves a touch more seriously and are better at articulating their emotions, and they will never shy away from a cheesy Hollywood moment with no sense of irony, but the senses of humour are there, alongside the budding friendships you want to join in with.  Of particular note this season is the island girls’ predilection for slipping suddenly into outrageous British accents to ask each other: “Are you alriiiight?”  This contrasts delightfully with their otherwise as-apple-pie American accents and is a healthy reminder of how stupid British people must sound abroad.  And at home.

Of course, the teeth are whiter, but the bikinis and trunks are no tighter.  Some bits are different, some are the same, but it’s enough to tide me over in my lockdown (will we, won’t we) viewing.  Sometimes it’s nice not to hear the T word (Trump) or to see human beings experience social contact without a curtain-twitching neighbour tutting.  And if you’re looking for pure joy, I recommend Cely from this year’s cohort.  Her constant ray of positivity starts every morning when she jumps out of bed with glee while her co-islander squint and groan, before she goes on to tackle every challenge and tribulation with laughter and good humour.  As the final approaches it will be interesting to see what American viewers make of her relationship with Johnny and whether they rate it over the slower and steadier Justine and Caleb.  All I know is I’ll be sorry again when it’s all over, but maybe there’s another international version of Love Island I can distract myself with.