Diane Morgan

The second series of the comedy about struggling middle-class mums ends with another Julia special: a school sports day where she faces off with old adversary Mrs Lamb. While the material is more knowing and less quietly chaotic, Anna Maxwell Martin and Diane Morgan excel themselves.

Joe Wilkinson brings girlfriend Diane Morgan to the Isle of Wight to meet the parents in this three-part series. It is a well-trodden format but mum and stepdad Sue Johnston and Bobby Ball are cringe-inducingly funny as they negotiate spare beds for the couple and put on a bad lunch. Sitcom splendour from co-writers Wilkinson and David Earl.

In praise of Motherland

Sharon Horgan and co's clever, funny, oestrogen-fuelled comedy is an antidote to the patronising delusions of smug parents..

The fake news in Motherland (BBC2) was that the new mum at the school gates, Meg (Tanya Moodie), was a superwoman.

Apparently an international business consultant, she struck deals in multiple languages on her mobile while raising five well-adjusted children and enjoying a blissful marriage.

Naturally, Julia (Anna Maxwell Martin) loathed her. 'Where's your secret sadness?' she fumed. But this is Motherland, where parenthood is the seventh circle of hell and every day when you haven't strangled one of your little darlings can be counted as a success.

No surprises, then, when Meg turned out to be a raging alcoholic who regarded hijacking a bus and confrontations with the police as ordinary hazards of a good binge.

Even if this comedy is a trifle cynical and earthy for some tastes, it's always worth it for the deadpan world-weariness of Liz (Diane Morgan) -- who reckons the chief compensation for being a single mother is getting ten per cent off at Dorothy Perkins.

TV review: Motherland, BBC2

It was announced just before this second series started that there would be a third series of Motherland. It's be interesting to see how it evolves as there are a few changes in the opening episode of the second run.

Motherland series 2 preview

It's a welcome return for Motherland, the comedy that does for parenthood what The Thick Of It did for politics - revealing in ugly detail the stresses and panic behind every hastily improvised decision made by the tired and harassed.

Motherland review

Parenting comedy returns with sad and angry hidden depths.

Motherland, series 2, review

This astute, spiky sitcom conjures stress so vivid that it's difficult to watch.

Does Motherland need to pit women against each other?

The BBC2 sitcom expertly deconstructs traditional representations of motherhood, only to lazily cast its characters as school-run Mean Girls.