Middle-class mums are in the not-so-flattering spotlight for a second season of Sharon Horgan, Holly Walsh and Helen Linehan's comedy on parenthood at the school gates. As term starts up, there is fresh blood in the form of high-flying mum of four Meg (straight-talking Tanya Moodie); she has conspicuously moved in opposite Julia (Anna Maxwell Martin), who continues to juggle a hectic career with the efforts of keeping up with the other parents. A gleeful takedown of competitive parenting culture.

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.

Shame on us for making Motherland so white

When BBC Two's comedy Motherland launched last year it was garlanded with praise for its warts-and-all portrayal of flustered parents thrust together at the school gates. But co-writer Sharon Horgan says she only belatedly realised they had made one serious oversight. 'We thought it was really fucking white,' she now admits, realising the narrow scope of the characters' ethnic mix. 'By the time we came to watch it, we thought, "shame on us".'