Once Motherland detonated onto our screens, a lid was lifted on the painful, cringe-inducing sides of motherhood. Not only that – the bizarre friendships that emerge from the shared experience of having children.
Whether you loved or hated them, queen of the alpha-mums Amanda (played by Lucy Punch) and her hapless sidekick Anne (Philippa Dunne) were addictive to watch as a pair. Their relationship was the stuff of Mean Girls or self-help books on how to escape toxic friendships at school.
Now in the show’s spin-off Amanadaland, Amanda’s marriage and life has fallen apart (she’s taken her kids out of private school) and they’re brought back together through a chance encounter outside the secondary school gates.
‘Anne is a little bit different this time, because she's had a couple of years off from Amanda, and she’s blossomed into her own little life,’ says Philippa. ‘She's got new friends, she's got back to work, she's kind of in her own little happiness bubble.’
This lasts all of two-minutes before she’s back under Amanda’s spell and back into the role of subjugated minion. She ‘secretly loves being sucked into Amanda's orbit’. She definitely ‘gets something out of the friendship’, says Philippa. ‘It's just that desperation to be wanted and to be liked, to fit in and be seen as valuable. That's why she's forever bending over backwards for Amanda.’
This low self-esteem, a heartbreaking quality, paired with Anne’s incredible kookiness and eccentricity is what makes her so charming though. ‘What I love is that the writers give me some really great lines,’ says Philippa. ‘I think if any characters come in and say something bonkers, it's usually Anne, and that's totally fine by me.’ Thankfully that continues seamlessly into the spin-off.
While fans of the hit-series Motherland adored just how fleshed out the characters were, a huge draw to the show was the hilarious depictions of parenthood as a constant state of running on a hamster-wheel. When Philippa first joined Motherland, she had no experience of having children. ‘I had no kids, so I didn't know if [the show] was exaggerated. But then I had a child, and I realised, “oh, my god, yeah, it is this”.’
Right from that first episode, ‘the stress, to the noise, the anxiety, the pressure, the chaos, the screaming, the roaring, the people that you have to deal with just because your children are in the same school – it's terribly relatable.’
A huge theme in Amanadaland is reinvention. It’s what sets the spin-off apart from its origin series, as Amanada has been forced to evolve from her comfortable queen-bee position in Motherland, to having to fight for that status and reverence again. Also her kids are older and the problems she’s facing are new, from her mother refusing to let her carer care for her, to teen parties with drinking.
‘I think when you become a parent, there are multiple stages of reinvention,’ says Philippa. ‘So when the child is first born, you're just like, “who am I? And what is my life? And how does any of this happen?”
‘And then within that first year, there are just so many milestones that you hit, and before you know what, your child is one, and then before you know what, your child is four, and they're starting school.’ You’re constantly dealing with a new reinvention every day, right from the source of stress to the problem solving you’re forced to do, she says.
Those early years are ‘causing you to grow up, be at your best and juggle all the plates, and maybe get some time for yourself somewhere along the way’.
While Amandaland might have done away with drama at soft-play, audiences can expect a whirlwind of teen issues, like dating problems and internet stress. ‘Hopefully, the Motherland audience will enjoy the teenage 2.0 version of parenting,’ says Philippa.
You can watch Amandaland on BBC iPlayer now.