TV has never been so nerve-jangling: 10 years of the agonising Motherland

The rage, the wine, the power mums, the PTA horror – the BBC sitcom was a spot on send-up of life at the school gates. A decade on, we remember its most awkward bitsIf Uncut Gems was about the school run instead of gambling debts, it would look like Motherland. It is now 10 years since the BBC sitcom jangled the already frayed nerves of all parents watching and turned Anna Maxwell Martin into the most frazzled woman on television in the name of skewering middle-class motherhood.Whether she was marching her children to buy school shoes the night before term started (“Don’t be closed. Pleeeeeaaaaase don’t be closed”) or having a meltdown at temporary traffic lights en route to a school drop-off that proved redundant because she’d forgotten it was half-term, Maxwell Martin’s Julia would undoubtedly have a more chilled-out time in the kitchen of The Bear than raising her kids. Continue reading...