Can this really be the first Amandaland Christmas special? Surely it’s the third, or 13th. Wasn’t Felicity Kendal in one, tutting? Didn’t David Jason turn up in another with a subplot about plumbing tucked under his arm, and everyone complained about the size of his turducken?
It has been around for less than a year, yet the wildly popular Motherland spin-off feels as if it has been with us for ever, so timeless are the characters. But, yes, this is indeed the first Christmas we will be spending chez Amanda (Lucy Punch), grasping show-poodle and self-ordained “Queen of SoHa” (south Harlesden). Or rather, chez Aunt Joan (a sublime turn from Jennifer Saunders), to whose dilapidated rural mansion Amanda journeys in the hope of recreating the “simpler” Christmases of her youth.
So it’s all off to Cirencester in neighbour Mal (Samuel Anderson)’s van. (The taxi, naturally, never showed up, thus reminding us of the first commandment of the Christmas comedy special: thou shalt not expect too much from the transportation sector.) Among those chivvied along by the determined-to-be-jolly-at-all-costs Amanda are her eye-rolling children, Georgie (Miley Locke) and Manus (Alexander Shaw); her icy mother, Felicity (Joanna Lumley); and her hapless best friend/dogsbody Anne (Philippa Dunne), whose flight home to Dublin has been cancelled. Anne enters into the festive spirit by blubbing profusely and telling everyone she wishes she was with her family. If Amanda is the selfie-ready #star in this tinselly tableau, Anne represents the donkey. The infant Jesus, meanwhile, is played by a pavlova and swaddled in Tupperware, in accordance with the scriptures. The pavlova – a gift for Aunt Joan – must be kept upright at all times, warns Amanda, lest “the compote breaches the meringue”.
The tone – faint desperation larded with a profound sense of unease – thus established, we prepare for an afternoon of merriment at Aunt Joan’s vast manor (“It’s only 11 acres and a ha-ha,” sniffs Felicity). And here she is, a vision of tumbledown eccentricity in padded gilet and bloodied apron (“You’ve caught me mid-giblets!”). Within seconds Joan is manically mustering the troops, distributing canapes and port, her novelty bauble earrings swinging like wrecking balls.
Amanda, meanwhile, is determined to recreate a favourite photograph – in which, as a teenager, she squished herself joyously between her aunt and mother – as they all say cheese over a pavlova the size of a pantomime cow. “It’ll be super-cute,” she trills, attempting to shoo everyone into position. Alas, this proves impossible. Everyone is distracted by the fact that the dog has made off with the trout paté.
Poor Amanda. Nobody cares about her enormous pavlova. This is the great, bittersweet joy of Amandaland – the vanity always comes with a side order of sadness. Amanda’s snobbishness, her self-delusion and her desperate need to make everything #adorbs has never really been about social standing, Insta-likes or TikTok-whatnots. It’s about filling the unfillable void caused by her mother’s lifelong indifference. In this, Sharon Horgan, Helen Serafinowicz, Barunka O’Shaughnessy, Laurence Rickard and Holly Walsh have created one of the great 21st-century tragedies.
To paraphrase Tolstoy (festive!): all happy families are alike; Amanda’s family is mad as a bag of tights. And so, back in Cirencester, Felicity continues to moan about Joan’s frantic positivity, Joan and Amanda continue to pretend that everything is a bed of Cadbury Roses, and Mal finds a secret stash of photographs of a young Felicity doing something unspeakable. (I’m not allowed to say any more about the latter because it’ll apparently spoil everyone’s stollen, but suffice to say it involves a series of very stupid misunderstandings and is very funny indeed.)
It’s not a perfect Christmas special: the plot feels a bit thrown together, the climactic homily is underpowered and the soundtrack is so frenetically flute-y that I kept worrying Jethro Tull would spring out from behind the privet hedge and hey-nonny me into the ha-ha.
But enough grinching. It’s Christmas, Jennifer Saunders is back on screen with Joanna Lumley and Amanda finally gets to recreate her childhood photo with a pavlova that isn’t really a pavlova at all, we realise, but a beautifully baked metaphor for family forgiveness. God bless us, every one!
• Amandaland Christmas Special aired on BBC One and is on iPlayer now.
