The Christmas special of Amandaland lands slap bang in the middle of the most challenging broadcasting slot of the year – 9.15pm on Christmas night, when we are all full of mince pies, trifle and sherry, and much too dazed to concentrate on anything more challenging than stuffing sandwiches.
But this engaging one-off is no Christmas turkey and, in a desolate Christmas Day landscape (see Mrs Brown’s Boys, etc), is the pick of the evening. Serving up cringe comedy with all the trimmings, it extracts huge mileage from the universal truth that there is nothing more taxing than spending extensive time with your loved ones.
Lucy Punch’s chic lady who lunches, Amanda, is theoretically the star of the show. But her thunder is thoroughly stolen by the Absolutely Fabulous duo of Joanna Lumley and Jennifer Saunders, who reunite to play Amanda’s disapproving mother, Felicity, and her fruity aunt Joan.
Amanda, Felicity and Amanda’s kid are spending Christmas at Joan’s rustic pile – a dusty time capsule that hasn’t changed since the 1970s. They’ve brought along neighbour Mal (Samuel Anderson) – guilted into providing an emergency lift – and Amanda’s Irish friend, Anne (Philippa Dunne), who has missed her flight home to Cork and dreads spending Christmas alone.
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The British class system is so different from the Irish one that watching sitcoms mine it for laughs can feel like intercepting alien broadcasts from another planet. On the other hand, spending time with the in-laws is a global ordeal, and there is lots of mileage in the tension between Felicity (starchy, self-important) and Joan (jolly, needy).
Amanda’s petite‑bourgeois instincts are leveraged hilariously too – as is her kids’ inability to function without technology. They are, for instance, horrified to discover the house doesn’t have wifi and aghast when she serves cola rather than Prime (ask a 10-year-old).
As an Irish character in a British sitcom, Anne follows in a tricky tradition where negative stereotypes were historically dominant. Irish jokes obviously won’t fly in 2025 – but Anne is nonetheless the only guest unable to handle her alcohol (an old trope).
That is a surprise given that Co Meath writer and actor Sharon Horgan is a producer of Amandaland (the script is by Laurence Rickard). There is also a weird gag where Anne reveals that her entire family is named either Patrick or Pat. It’s a bizarre line. Pat is not a particularly common name among Irish people – on a generous reading, the gag is flat and lazy. A less generous interpretation would be that, much like Joan’s house, the script has one foot in the mid-1970s.
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Back in its glory years, Ab‑Fab was one of those comedies that sounded like a real rib-tickler until you actually watched it – when it was revealed to be insufferably pleased with itself. Fortunately, Lumley and Saunders are far funnier here.
That said, a later scene in which Joan confesses how insecure she has always felt about growing up in her sister’s shadow is perfectly judged – as is the subplot in which a case of mistaken identity in old photographs leads Amanda to conclude she is Mick Jagger’s love child.
Christmas is about excess and familial angst – but it’s also about tenderness and tears, and all of the above are combined in perfect portions in this cheery, perceptive and very funny one-off.
