The new show was created and written by the same team that came up with Bafta-winning comedy series Motherland; Holly Walsh, Helen Serafinowicz and Barunka O’Shaughnessy, with Horgan credited as creator.
Motherland was reportedly axed after its 2022 Christmas special.
For its follow-up, the Independent’s Charlotte O’Sullivan noted:, external “Arguably, lessons have been learnt.
“Where the final festive episode [of Motherland] was bracingly bleak, Amandaland (written by roughly the same team, plus Horrible Histories’s Laurence Rickard) has a cosier, more romcom-ish vibe.”
In her four-star review, O’Sullivan said the story of “Punch’s posh alpha mum, is clever, jolly and hard to resist”.
“Even in Motherland, Amanda had angst,” she said. “In the new show, as you’d expect, there’s more time to explore her loneliness and self-doubt. What is Amanda good for? The answer is frequently absolutely nothing. But we root for this absurd and vulnerable woman all the same.”
“Richard Curtis [the Notting Hill and Love Actually director] minimised the realities of gentrification to an outrageous degree,” she continued. “Amandaland, by contrast, seems deliberately designed to get us talking about what happens to a deprived area when the middle classes move in.”
