The TV legend is back on screen with Joanna Lumley for a brilliant guest role in the Motherland spinoff. It’s all off to Aunt Joan’s mansion for a beautifully bittersweet festive tale 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. Continue reading...