Is the new Mother and Son already better than the original? Our reviewer says yes

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Mother and Son (season two) ★★★★

The first season of Mother and Son, comedian Matt Okine’s reboot of the beloved ABC sitcom that ran from 1984 to 1994, was always up against it.

Judging from the pained reactions of “is nothing sacred??” that met its announcement, the reboot was bound to face unfair comparisons with a classic that won its stars – Garry McDonald and Ruth Cracknell – three Gold Logies between them during its original run.

Matt Okine and Denise Scott as Arthur and Maggie Boye in Mother and Son.

That it revealed itself to be a charming update with its own understated sensibility, fun performances from Okine as apathetic Arthur and Denise Scott as his ditsy mum Maggie, and more than enough to say about the Millennial-v-Boomer culture wars, was probably lost on many who didn’t give it a chance.

Those people have no excuse now: Mother and Son’s second season is a lovely thing. At just six episodes, it even leaves you wanting more.

The show again mines relatable laughs from the generational divide. Maggie doesn’t get Arthur’s “job” as a content creator; Arthur has to explain to Maggie how streaming works, and that cash is not a thing anyone uses any more, and to not trust 5G conspiracy theories she reads on Facebook, and to not give out her account information to random callers posing as “the bank”.

Is this a sitcom or a documentary of my life? Okine, the show’s main writer, understands that the central Millennial experience is worrying about your Boomer parents getting scammed online, in phone calls, in real life. They are such a vulnerable bunch.

As a depiction of the “intergenerational bastardry” that defines Australian life in the 2020s, this show couldn’t be more precise. Like every situation between home-owning Boomers and have-nothing Millennials, money is the show’s underlying obsession: every episode involves Arthur and his sister Robbie (Angela Nica Sullen) scheming to get their hands on their mum’s nest egg, or to stop others from getting to it.

The first episode sees Maggie finding a paramour during a family resort holiday; Arthur and Robbie are instantly sceptical about what this guy is trying to steal from their mum. It’s sad this is what parent-child relationships have come to, but blame capitalism. Or the housing crisis. Or the cowardly political class who won’t do the obvious things to fix it.

For a show with death and ageing at its core (and there are more than a few clues that Maggie is succumbing to dementia), it still keeps things sitcom light. There’s a playful warmth between Okine and Scott’s endless bickering that’s just fun to sit with.

The jokes even land this time around. Like when Maggie, keen to buy a Big Issue equivalent from a spruiker on the street, asks Arthur for some cash. “Oh yeah, I’ve got some in my pocket, next to my sundial and my CD collection,” he shoots back. “I did cashless, Arthur,” Maggie later replies, “it was called my 20s.”

Arthur (Matt Okine) and his sister Robbie (Angela Nica Sullen) are always scheming (and worrying) about their mum’s money.

Just as good as its subtle politics is Mother and Son’s equally subtle portrayal of modern multicultural Australia, far beyond the cliched Australiana that local TV still tries to sell us.

Episodes are shot on location in Sydney’s Ashfield and Homebush West, where a Chinese medicine clinic sits next to a Filipino grocery that sits next to a Nepalese barbershop that sits next to a Lebanese tobacconist.

It shouldn’t be striking to see your city shown on TV the way it looks when you walk it in real life, and yet here we are. Is any other local TV show depicting Australia this honestly without a shred of self-congratulatory fuss? I haven’t seen it.

Mother and Son (season two) starts on Wednesday, September 24, at 8.30pm on ABC TV. All episodes are available to stream on ABC iview.

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