Amandaland (BBC1)
Rating – five out of five stars
Follow that! The festive special of Amandaland was easily the best of the Christmas telly last year, with Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley as seething sisters forced to spend Joyous Noel together.
Guest star Jen earned a Bafta nomination for her turn. She made her entrance in a blood-soaked apron, like Jack the Ripper discovered in the middle of preparing the Christmas dinner, crowing, ‘You caught me mid-giblets!’
That triumphant one-off followed a brilliant first series, which has been rewarded with three more ticks on the Bafta shortlist: best scripted comedy, plus nods for its stars Lucy Punch and Philippa Dunne.
But the trouble with that level of success is the expectation it creates. As Amandaland returned for a second series, anything less than comic excellence was bound to be a disappointment.
We needn’t have worried. This show is bursting with invention, so full of possibilities that it crams three or four sources of fun into half an hour and plunders all of them gleefully.
Attention-hungry Amanda has found her metier as an online influencer. It doesn’t matter that, since she doesn’t have any followers, she’s not actually influencing anyone. She has a lifestyle brand, and that’s the important thing.
Once the queen of the school-gate mums in Motherland, Amanda has been stripped of her status by divorce and the passage of a few years, not to mention a move from snooty Chiswick to shabby South Harlesden (she calls it ‘SoHa’). No longer able to afford a home with a showcase kitchen or designer clothes, she’s lost the most valuable privilege in her life — the luxury of looking down her nose at her friends.
She ought to be loathsome. But she does have one redeeming feature: unquenchable confidence. She is a trier, because she truly believes life owes her the best of everything. ‘You just can’t confront someone like Amanda with reality,’ says her loyal chum Anne.
Pictured: Lucy Punch portraying Amanda in the BBC One show Amandaland
In this, she’s not unlike another sitcom fantasist, Del Boy. The market trader from Only Fools, played by David Jason, sipping his cocktail as though this would somehow transform a grotty pub into a glamorous celebrity hangout, was a relentless optimist, and we couldn’t help loving him. Amanda would be appalled at the comparison, of course.
Writers Holly Walsh and Laurence Rickard (who played the headless Sir Humphrey in Ghosts) continue to poke fun at the trials of parenthood, giving them potential material for several more series.
This time, the mums and dads were trying to give a presentation on careers to a roomful of sarky teens, which, as everyone who has tried it knows, is pretty much a guarantee of public humiliation.
Stroppy chef Della (Siobhan McSweeney) appeared only in cameos via an iPad, making way for a fresh antagonist — forthright food bank worker Abs (Harriet Webb). She and Amanda detested each other on sight. This will be fun.
