Bloods review

For a show that features crack addicts, multi-vehicle pile-ups and a cardiac arrest, Bloods is surprisingly silly.

Bloods review

Patchy paramedic comedy unlikely to split your sides.

Lucy Punch on Motherland and Bloods

The actress on having it all, her new medical comedy, the return of Amanda and why her 'snide, smug' face is a blessing.

Bloods review

The series looks for comic potential in the emergency services through the antics of two mismatched colleagues.

Motherland Christmas special review

The slapstick carnage in this one-off episode - there's a broken nose, a toppled tree and an explosion of flour - is not as funny as the more low-key moments.

Motherland Christmas Special, BBC2, review

A hilarious dose of reality at a time of forced schmaltz.

Motherland, final episode, review

A hilariously close-to-the-bone depiction of parenthood.

I made the mistake a few weeks ago of powering through every single outing of Nick Hornby's lovely, subtle State of the Union in a single night. I won't be erring in similar fashion with the latest series of Motherland, even though it's tempting, it all having been dumped on iPlayer in one greedy gloop.

No, I'll savour it: and the opener (all right, opening two) have riches to savour indeed. Chiefly, in the first, the gutsy performance of Tanya Moodie as 'aving-it-all, high-flying mum Meg, who soon lets slip that her very singular definition of "juggling" is being able to conduct a fluent South American conference-call while throwing up in a pub toilet, having just been arrested for pissing in the street. To, first of all, Julia (Anna Maxwell Martin) and her jealous disdain - her wordless, mouth-stretching half-sneers to every one of Meg's matey gambits are a joy to half-behold - and, then, her sneaking admiration: might Meg even be a role-model, a mentor, someone who can help her navigate the vicissitudes of middle-class London motherhood?

No.

Julia sinks back to her comfort levels of harried incompetence - and even below those levels, soon taking to arriving at the losers' table in the cafe in sweatpants and cheap faux-furry coat. Even Liz, the wonderfully sane-speaking Diana Morgan, raises an eyebrow: "You look like a mental patient."

Is Julia about to have that long-threatened, possibly delicious, full English breakdown? And how long can the (equally well-drawn) Amanda (Lucy Punch), arriving way late to the "hygge" beanfeast with her over-niche shop ("store," she will insist), funded by hubby's guilt-money over the split, continue to sell scented candles at £89? Cards only ("we're cashless!")? I'm going to wait to find out, and suggest you toy weekly with it: subtler than Sharon Horgan's Catastrophe, with input from a further three writers, this is at most turns a joy, although occasionally the type of joy felt upon the absence of pain about 40 seconds after stepping on a piece of Lego in your bare feet.