Amandaland returns to BBC One for a second season, focusing on the optimistic and deluded influencer Amanda Hughes. The comedy highlights her eccentricities and detachment from reality through sharp writing and a supporting cast including Joanna Lumley.
Television: Amandaland’s greatest asset is not its cast but a steady supply of zingers, which keep the action ticking along Amandaland S2 People: Felicity , Amanda , Mal and Anne Credit: BBC/Merman/Natalie Seery Photographer: Natalie Seery The trick with a comedy character such as Lucy Punch’s vacant influencer Amanda Hughes – back for a second season of – is to play up their delusions and idiosyncrasies without making them seem manically unhinged.
That balancing act is carried off more or less to perfection in this spin-off ofthat has far less to say about the trials of modern parenting than its predecessor and is much the better for it. Amanda is reintroduced making a Dragon’s Den-style pitch to a potential “Far East investor”. In other words, the bank manager at her local HSBC branch. Here and elsewhere, a crueller show would portray her as catastrophically deluded.
But Amandaland skimps on the nastiness and instead quietly celebrates her optimism, her can-do spirit and her complete detachment from reality.portrayal of David Brent in The Office – doesn’t have it in her to actively dislike her alter ego. Yes, Amanda is shallow, flighty and an enthusiastic snob. But her heart is generally in the right place. She genuinely believes her career as an influencer is about to catapult her to internet fame..
She returns as Amanda’s vacant mother, Felicity, the sort of sheltered posho who doesn’t know how to work an oven and whose idea of a birthday present for her grandson is a hastily scribbled cheque. The only perfect video game ever made, plus the rest of our top 30 – in reverse orderPhilippa Dunne as her underdog sidekick, Anne.
The sort of bestie who will tell you comforting lies all day long, Anne undergoes a personality reboot when a fellow school mum encourages her to be assertive. But this does not go down well with Amanda who has problems of her own in the shape of a rivalry with newcomer Abs , ex of her neighbour, Mal. Amanda is an absurd creation – Punch has described her as tragic.
But, then, life is absurd too, and the show does not spare the supporting crew of Anne, Mal , Fi and her chef wife Della (Amandaland’s greatest asset, however, is not its cast but a steady supply of zingers, which keep the action ticking along. These undercut the bleak truth that Amanda is not the sort of person you’d want as a neighbour – she might complain if you showed up in the background of one of her TikToks.
Still as a comedy character, she is one of the best things British television has produced in years. Her second season in the spotlight is a proper treat for connoisseurs of cringe.
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