Amandaland

[Wallasey123]

Not airing until 5th Feb but who else is as excited as me for this?!

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vnWbDVho03w

Amanda is so vulnerable, but she hides it well behind her tough / bossy exterior.
I wouldn't be friends with her, but she is oddly likeable ( if that makes any sense )

I'm the same. Just didn't take to Julia at all but strangely fond of Amanda. No idea why.

I like the way she's parenting her kids as teenagers. I wonder how Julia would cope with teens.

The best bits of Julia were when she and Liz were together - they completely got each other.

I loved both characters . I prefer Amanda though.i think both characters are selfish and self absorbed but Julia more so. I didn’t like the way she treated her mother. She was a user. Amanda probably has the halo effect but seems more neurotic and insecure. It seems life is humbling her and she is more endearing.

During one of the Christmas special ones when Amanda said to Julia ' I'm losing this lovely house ' .. I feel that it really hit her then that she having to make some tough decisions and choices. It made me feel a bit sorry for her

I also found Julia to be an insufferable and self centred user through all three seasons. Every group of people seems to have one like this, I'm quite happy to lose her from the mix.

Amanda has a lot more scope for development - raised to focus on looks and finding the right man and putting all her efforts into home and children she is now quite vulnerable as the big salary fucks off with the OW. In her 40s she needs to find a way to earn a living and reorganise life - its not an uncommon story and its interesting.

Love Lumley and think she is at her best in observational comedy with a slow burn on character development. Conversations from a Long Marriage is a work of genius.

Agree Mal is the Liz replacement - like the character but would be even happier to have kept Liz as well. Hope we see more of his family relationships over time.

Della and Fi - under developed, we only saw a glimps of more in the conversation with Amanda about the strains of starting a business. I hope they are rounded out in season 2.

I would also like to hear more about Anne's job and what she is now doing. I wonder if she will be revealed to have returned to GSK or similar using her PhD. Also loved the "I know this stuff therefore I can teach it" scenes - I suspect most parents have been there.

For a school in Harlesden the DC school is extremely white unless the demographic has changed dramatically in the last decade.

Yes! I was waiting to see the scene of Anne at work and to see the contrast in how she operates there. I'd love to see confident Anne, assured in her knowledge and decision making, bolstered by her PhD from Imperial. Go Anne!

Yes I'd like to see her as something like the retained expert advisor on strategic decisions around drug development or similar. My experience of "Annes" is that they are no more shouty than the real Anne but have the knack of simply getting things done and banging heads together effectively.

I loved to hate Julia but really her bad behaviour was generally the fault of trying to balance work and children with a man child of a husband who did nothing to help. I loved the Julia, Liz, Kevin group being the band of misfits who would never have been friends without meeting at the school gate. It’s why it might not make sense for them to still be spending time together.

My issue with Julia was not that she was struggling to juggle or that she had a useless husband. It was that her solution to the useless husband was to pass all the shit on to the other women in her life and give precious little in return.

At the beginning of series one the children were nine and five and had received all their care from their grandmother, including parties, sports days, swimming etc - all of which were new to the Julia who had never had to worry about her old own DC whilst at work. Instead of paying for more help or setting higher expectations of DH, she just berates her mother for being selfish in ceasing the full time childcare. Husband, when he finally appeared. received a free pass on his behaviour beyond the odd eye roll.

Its a character I've certainly seen in real life and its very unattractive. They were usually also the loudest whiners about how hard they had it and how SAHMs such as Amanda have it all so easy (but BTW Amanda you're a SAHM so pick up my kids on Thursday). The whole "starting my own PR business" whilst apparently doing no work was just nonsense even for TV portrayals of WFH.

Obviously I'm over invested in the characters!

Oh , no doubt about it , Julia wasn't a particularly pleasant person and only became friends with Liz and Kev because Amanda's crowd shunned her. A kind of female Basil Fawlty at times.
The swimming pool one was funny though when Liz said to her
' why you dressed like Hilary Clinton '
😆
That really is a great episode of ML

😂

I love Liz

I find it hard to believe Amanda didnt get a degree and only had 3 GCSEs

She would probably have just scraped a free education in the 90s

I reckon she would have gotten a 2:2 from somewhere posh in an artsy subject

Before doing the ski seasons at Val d'Isere and working front of house at Bibendum

I guess she went to a small private school full of rock star kids that didn’t care too much about results

Oh hello Kevin, what are you doing here?

I agree. Like I said the other day, it’s clear the writers were making a point about Amanda wanting better for her kids, but I think they could have made her education background more credible and her rationale for wanting more would have remained. I can see her as an alumni of Goldsmiths or Central St Martins. She wouldn’t be the type to have left London to do a degree.

Agreed. No problems with the actor, but as a character he made my skin crawl.... just a vile man. So glad Amanda got rid of him!

She does reveal the school she went to in an episode of ML (when talking to Meg about playing hockey) but can't remember what school she said.

How the feckity does Joanna L still manage to look amazing and steal every scene.

I couldn't warm to ML purely because of Julia (doesn't help she's a dead ringer for a frenemy), but AL is banging.

Putney High School.

Art History

I have to say - it's growing on me!

I'm on episode camping / it's very funny.

I'm changing my mind.

The two Irish women not liking each other is, itself - very funny.

I think the point is that her parents didn't give a crap about her education.

Julia making Amanda pick her kids up because she, Amanda, was a SAHM? Did you watch Motherland? The soft saps in that programme were Anne and Kevin. No way would Amanda put herself out for anybody!