CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews last night’s TV: Snooty Amanda’s irresistible in a show that’s bursting with fun
Amandaland (BBC1)
Rating – five out of five stars
Follow! Amandaland’s festive special was the absolute best in Christmas television last year, starring Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley as seething sisters forced to spend a Joyous Christmas together.
Guest star Jen was also nominated for a Bafta. He opens his entrance with a blood-soaked apron like the one discovered by Jack the Ripper while preparing Christmas dinner, shouting ‘You caught me in the middle of the offal!’ He did it by shouting.
This triumphant one-off wonder first series was awarded a further three nods on the Bafta shortlist: best scripted comedy, as well as nods to its stars Lucy Punch and Philippa Dunne.
But the problem with this level of success is the expectation it creates. When Amandaland returned for a second series, anything less than comic excellence would be disappointing.
We don’t need to worry. This show is full of invention, so full of possibilities that it packs three or four sources of entertainment into half an hour and gleefully plunders them all.
Hungry for attention, Amanda discovered she had more talent as an online influencer. It doesn’t matter that he doesn’t actually influence anyone because he doesn’t have any followers. There’s a lifestyle brand and that’s all that matters.
Amanda, once the queen of schoolhouse mothers in the Motherland, has been stripped of her status by the divorce and the intervening few years; not to mention his move from snooty Chiswick to shabby South Harlesden (he calls it ‘SoHa’). Because she could no longer afford a home with a showcase kitchen or designer clothes, she had lost the most precious privilege of her life: the luxury of looking down on her friends.
He must be disgusting. But he has one thing that saves him: an unquenchable self-confidence. He is an essayist because he truly believes that life owes him the best of everything. ‘You can’t make someone like Amanda face reality,’ says her loyal friend Anne.
Picture: Lucy Punch plays Amanda in BBC One show Amandaland
In this respect, it is not similar to another sitcom fantasy, Del Boy. The market trader in Only Fools, played by David Jason, was a relentless optimist as he sipped his cocktail as if this would somehow transform a crappy bar into a glamorous celebrity hangout, and we couldn’t help but love him. Amanda would of course be appalled by the comparison.
Writers Holly Walsh and Laurence Rickard (who played the headless Sir Humphrey in Ghosts) continue to poke fun at parenting trials, giving them potential material for a few more series.
This time the moms and dads were trying to give a presentation about careers to a roomful of saggy teenagers, which, as anyone who’s tried knows, is almost a guarantee of public humiliation.
Hot chef Della (Siobhan McSweeney) appeared only in cameos via iPad, making way for a new foe, outspoken food bank worker Abs (Harriet Webb). He and Amanda hated each other at first sight. This will be fun.
