With a couple of power house writers like Sharon Horgan and Graham Linham on board then you expect Motherland to be good and I'm pleased to report it's every bit as good as there previous work. I'm guessing the writers have based the material on there own experiences bringing up young kids, trying to juggle jobs between the school run and a lazy ex husband and a mother who would rather be socialising than looking after her gran kids. Anna Maxwell Smith is terrific as the frustrated mother who seems permanently on the point of a nervous breakdown and Diane Morgan is very funny as The worldly wise mother who knows every trick in the book when it comes to parenting on the cheap and who to avoid and befriend in the world of Motherhood!

If this is even vaguely reminiscent of what London has become then I'm glad that I left in 1993. None of these characters have any spine, balls, common sense or any semblance of real human beings. They're all infinitely slappable and I have no sympathy for any of them since they can't actually stand up for themselves in any way at all. How Linehan got involved in this fiasco is beyond me since he's one of the greatest comic writers of our generation. Maybe his wife henpecked him into attaching his name to it. The laughs are few and far between, and filling the gaps is some sort of what's meant to be observational humour but it falls flat when you're watching supposedly intelligent people do stupid things. My girlfriend forced me to watch it and even she was getting racked off towards the end. This isn't comedy. It's tragedy.

This is one of the funniest series i've seen since Peep show stopped airing. The characters are all hilarious, there is never a time where i'm disappointed when we have to be with a specific character other than the bitching from the over worked moms which comes out as angsty hilarity, your chest tightens with the darkness of the humour and the expectation of the dreadful thing they're going to say; Julia is hard nosed, selfish. Liz is sarky single mom who's had a hard life, and Kevin is a cringing, lovable, pushover, which emphasise the reality of school mom's. all the side characters are equally fleshed out and have there own awful personalities, but you understand where they come from, the sarcy backhanded comments remind you of my own experience as a child.

I don't know why I never heard about this series. It is certainly the funniest pilot I have seen in a long time. Absolutely hilarious and fresh and real unlike clichéd Hollywood motherhood depictions. At least most mothers I know would surely identify. Really disappointing that there is only this one episode --looking forward to more.