Motherland II:I hear the sound of distant mums.

NO MUM LEFT BEHIND!

Following the first series of Motherland, in 2017, I wrote a review of it in which I described it as "a place that was pleasant enough for a day trip but unlikely to inspire repeat visits". Turned out I called it wrong because, two years later, a second series appeared on BBC2. Public demand or not, it seemed very little had changed - and I did, obviously, make that repeat visit.

All the familiar faces were back. Diane Morgan's Liz, the chaotic, blunt talking, and operation obsessed single mother who this time is allowed some romantic, or at least sexual, interest. Paul Ready's Kevin, the henpecked, put upon, well meaning house husband whose wife, Jill, like 'er indoors on Minder (for readers of a certain age) is spoken of but never seen. Amanda (Lucy Punch) is still unbearably rude, self-obsessed, and stuck up. Anne (Phillipa Dunne) is still Lucy's primary quarry, but this time she's a bun in the oven, and the action still revolves around Anna Maxwell Martin's Julia. Who's adapting to working from home. or more often a local coffee shop where she imagines a friend, Nick, to be her real PA because he pretended to be so a couple of times. Julia has become more stressed, more anxious, and more anarchic than before.

Which is the general theme of series two. Like the first one but with the volume turned up. Not least in the addition of new character Meg (Tanya Moodie). Meg is a high flyer who gave a talk at Davos last year and who also appears to be able to party until the small hours. Meg is also black which was something of an oversight in the first series of a drama about schools in a fairly central London location!

The first episode is primarily devoted to the introduction of Meg. Meg has five daughters and appears to be in some sort of power play with Amanda. As if, it seems, to irk Amanda she befriends Julia, Liz, and Kevin who she deems the 'freaks' and the 'cool kids' in direct opposite to Amanda's 'pony club'. It's not long before Meg is dropping stories of getting paid in Stolichnaya for doing consultancy work for the Latvian government and trying to order cocaine from Deliveroo before pissing in the street, falling over, snogging a stranger, telling the police her name is JR Hartley, and puking up in a urinal. All in one night out.

Which encapsulates much about the humour of Motherland. There are two types of gags the writers (Graham Linehan has been replaced for the second series by Barunka O'Shaughnessy but Holly Wash, Helen Linehan, and Sharon Horgan all stay - making the script team all female) tend to fall back on. Borderline surreal slapstick (puking up in a urinal) or knowing references. Deliveroo is joined by bubble tea, antihistamines, Wotsits, WhatsApp groups, Nutribullets, and the arancini balls that you can buy at Carluccio's in an attempt to give the action the air of 'now'.

There are, of course, mentions of Brexit, of gentrification, and other subjects du jour and, even more predictably, it's not long before someone mentions they'd quite fancy a glass of Sauvignon Blanc. Amanda's new store (never a shop) is called Hygge Tygge and it's on the site of the former kebab outlet much to the disgust of Liz. But, ultimately, the writers have tried just too hard to shoehorn too many references in.

Martin Chuzzlewit. Tim Henman. TV Quick. Paul Hollywood. It starts to sound like Hello by The Beloved. Or the chunterings of a lunatic on the bus. But there are genuine laughs to be had among all this showing off. My first minor titter came with a story about one of Julia's co-workers receiving a written warning about his breath and I did an actual LOL when Kevin, in an attempt to be over friendly, nearly kissed Meg's teenage daughter full on the lips.

A woefully misguided police talk about class A drugs and hardcore pornography at a junior school is pretty funny, I sniggered when Anne's pea pod Hallowe'en costume was described as a 'massive green vagina', and the fact that I thought an agency cleaner finding the handlegrip to a scooter and mistaking it for a dildo (and laughed at the accidental revealing of a graffitied jizzing cock) perhaps says more about my smutty, still teenage, mind than it does Motherland.

But for all the good jokes (and there's two or three per episode) there are still a lot of very weak ones. The show was available to binge watch on iPlayer but, quite frankly, it's still not so good that you'd actually want to. The running joke about Julia's husband never being available (he's triathlon training this time) has become tired, Kevin's attempts to fit in and be politically correct (eagerly agreeing to take children to see some puppies and remarking that girls can do karate on their periods) never quite hit the mark as devastatingly as they should, and an episode devoted to a half term weekend away for the mums, Kevin, and kids proved particularly disappointing.

Not least because it seemed as if the scriptwriters had tried extra hard with it. It also seems as if rich comedic gold could be mined by placing mollycoddled London mums out in the sticks where the off-licenses close early and Ubers, or even cabs, are almost impossible to come by. A Lee Mead cameo, too, felt exruciatingly forced into the Hallowe'en episode. As if he's Robert De Niro or something rather than some fucker off Casualty!

Guess they couldn't get Colin Firth or Dominic West! Between the genuinely funny and the mildly painful there's some decent, if hardly incisive, observational stuff. The sports day, trick or treating, and weekend away all looked very real (somewhat drab and dull) and giving the school houses the names of London rivers (Wandle, Effra, and Fleet) was always going to win brownie points with me.

There were also, quite surprisingly, some tender moments. Which is not something I recall from the first series. I was quite moved when Liz confessed to being lonely and missing her kids now that they're both at school and I even felt sad for Amanda when she got dolled up for what she thought was going to be a reunion with her ex but turned out to be just a fleeting visit so he could pick up the kids.

I can feel sympathy for awful people. Even fictional awful people. But despite great performances all round (yet again) I never felt that Motherland had quite the depth and emotional warmth as something like Aisling Bea's recent This Way Up (which Sharon Horgan was also involved in) and as it wasn't as funny either it loses out on both counts. The whole thing ended on something of a sad note but also on the tiniest of cliff-hangers, suggesting that Motherland will probably be back for a third series sooner rather than later. Again, I'll probably give it the benefit of the doubt. Again, I'll probably laugh two or three times each episode and again, I'll probably write a review about it saying I liked it - but that it could be so much better. Plus ca change.