While watching ABC’s Mother and Son remake – created, starring and co-written by Matt Okine – my mind pogoed between two thoughts: “Don’t think about the original!” and “What about the original?” Such is the dilemma in assessing reinterpretations of beloved productions. It’d be folly not to reflect on the predecessor, especially when they’re as good as Geoffrey Atherden’s venerated classic: a masterclass in proto-Costanzian squabble that’s perhaps Australia’s greatest sitcom. Yet any new iteration should be afforded elbow room to find its own groove.
Nevertheless, the producers of Mother and Son take two can hardly complain about the inevitable comparisons – particularly when it comes to the show’s lead performances. If Gary McDonald – whose TV career also includes his hilarious character Norman Gunston – was a one in a thousand as the original Arthur, in a perfectly flustered performance, then Ruth Cracknell was a one in a million as his mother Maggie, with her sister-of-Mr-Burns devilishness and irresistibly lemon-sucking demeanour.
Denise Scott is the new Maggie in this remake, and Okine her Arthur – not a domestic whiz like McDonald’s character, but more of a manchild, partial to playing video games and smoking reefers. When a potential buyer arrives at the pair’s family home, Maggie is shuffled into the outdoor laundry to stay out of the way. She drinks from what appears to be a bottle of cleaning liquid, later revealed to be booze. Okine, who wrote this episode, oddly doesn’t allow his character to witness this moment, despite it being an obvious connection to a key story thread: Arthur pondering whether Maggie is still with it or getting a bit non compos mentis.
In the first four episodes, which are covered by this review, the Mother and Son world is no longer white bread suburbia. The new Arthur is Ghanaian Australian, raised, like Okine (who is of Ghanaian and European descent), by a white mother. But the show’s multicultural aspect is otherwise understated: rather than explicitly focusing on particular ethnic communities, information about the characters’ culture and heritage tends to emerge organically through dialogue.
The pilot episode sees the pair inspecting an assisted living facility for Maggie, and two things are obvious: one, she won’t like it, and two, she ain’t going anywhere. Mother and son will share the family home, despite plans from Arthur’s sister (Angela Nica Sullen) to sell it. After finishing the first episode I wasn’t sure what to make of the show, though it grew on me as I kept watching. As a remake it’s lacklustre (and not a patch on the original), but as its own production, doing its own thing, it’s modestly entertaining.
Old-school sitcoms typically involved few settings and were often performed in front of a live audience. That format is passé now, superseded by modern variations that are visually busier and fussier – often, as here, to their detriment. Director Neil Sharma (Heartbreak High) begins with a series of quick images, capturing Maggie’s slippers walking along the floor, a chess piece that hits the ground and breaks, and a mantelpiece with framed photographs and an urn. The camera curves around to centre the urn, signposting its significance.
On that subject: how many more films and shows must we watch featuring jokes involving a person’s ashes being smeared across a loved one’s face? I feel like I’ve seen that gag a million times and it has never been funny. Whereas the first Mother and Son came across as effortless – all that salty dialogue flowing thick and fast – the remake feels forced, particularly when it comes to sight and gross-out gags. Maggie, at one point, enters the lounge room naked, the camera poised behind her buttocks; later, Arthur attempts to give a rooster mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. During these moments the show works very hard for laughs that don’t land.
Given the pared-back pleasures of the original – which was like a filmed play – the new Mother and Son is at its best when focusing on interpersonal dynamics and snarky back-and-forth between the titular characters. Scott and Okine both do a good job, bringing likability and some charisma. But talk about a poisoned chalice. The genius of McDonald and Cracknell is even more apparent now that others have performed in their shadows.
• Mother and Son begins on ABC TV and iView at 8.30pm on 23 August.
