Why we’re watching... Mum

If, like me, you regard BBC3’s Him & Her as the best TV comedy of the 2010s, you will have been keen to see if writer Stefan Golaszewski and his team (director Richard Laxton and producers Kenton Allen and Lyndsay Robinson) would be able to maintain that standard in a new project. Well, they certainly could, and then some. Mum (BBC2, Fridays) has many of the attributes and strengths of its predecessor but is also shaping up to be something wholly memorable in its own right.

Where the action of the first three series of Him & Her was confined to Steve and Becky’s bedsit and each episode shot in real time, Mum is a little more expansive: it has the whole of a suburban semi as its playground and a very slightly more relaxed timeframe, though the action of each episode remains closely sequential.

The main point of comparison, though, is in the characterisation: two likeable central characters whose main flaw is their seeming inability to communicate effectively with each other, are surrounded by a group of family and friends who range from the inept to the hateful. Golaszewski has a wonderful talent for establishing characters with the most economic of means, but without resort to stereotype and with plenty of scope for development.

At the centre of the piece is Cathy (the marvellous Lesley Manville), recently widowed but bearing up well and, for the time being, sharing the house with son Jason (Sam Swainsbury), who has ambitions to move to Australia. Offering their support are long-time friend Michael (a welcome sympathetic role for Peter Mullan) and brother Derek (Ross Boatman), whose new partner Pauline (Dorothy Atkinson) is a despicable snob. Jason’s girlfriend Kelly (Lisa McGrillis) is a well-meaning airhead and the source of a lot of the humour, while in-laws Reg and Maureen offer the kind of scathing commentary only the elderly can get away with.

All the characters have depth and there are clues that we have much more to discover about them: what did Kelly suffer at the hands of her ex? What personal trauma lies behind Pauline’s appalling behaviour? The most recent episode (the third) introduced Kelly’s mother Carol (Tanya Franks) as such a brash and insensitive creature that Cathy immediately tells Michael she “might be the worst person I’ve ever met” (worse than Pauline?).

Carol’s merciless verbal abuse of her own daughter is passed off as banter, yet, when Cathy mentions the potential move to Australia, her demeanour alters and her attitude to Kelly becomes more affectionate, revealing a desperate insecurity behind the bluster.

This gallery of characters is perfectly realised by a terrific cast, but at the centre are Cathy and Michael, and it is their relationship which raises the most questions. Michael is clearly in love with Cathy, but is he holding back out of reticence, or out of respect for the recently departed Dave? The details of their life of friendship are the key and the holiday snap we saw in the third episode is the first clue.

There is certainly a greater narrative drive to Mum, underlined by the fact that each episode takes place in an identified month in the year after Dave’s death, than there was to Him & Her, which made a virtue of nothing happening in its first two series. But the overwhelming feeling from both series is one of watching real people with real emotions, conveyed through the minutiae of everyday life. In this respect, Golaszewski’s work bears comparison with the great TV films of Mike Leigh from the 70s and 80s, with Lesley Manville providing a link between the two.