This Mother’s Day, let’s be proud that at least we’re not Betty Draper

Sophie Quick

May 1, 2026 — 9:17am

Mother’s Day is coming up and the streaming platforms are coming for your mother’s eyeballs. And for yours, too.

The major streamers typically mark the event with curated collections and recommendations for movie nights and binge sessions you can enjoy with your mother, or a mother. They’ve been known to dish up the likes of The Nanny, Parks and Recreation, Never Have I Ever, Pride and Prejudice and Gilmore Girls around this time of year, as well as nostalgic classics such as The Lion King, The Princess Bride and Freaky Friday.

Beyond the small screen, we’re seeing hysterical promotion this year for the cinema release of The Devil Wears Prada 2, complete with endless Mother’s Day-themed brand activations.

That’s all fine – plenty of great stuff, much of it probably backed by data on demographic preferences – but it might be wise to check in with the mothers you know to see what they really feel like watching. One thing I have noticed about many mothers, including myself, is that we are often hard on ourselves.

Maybe what mothers are really looking for this year, instead of upbeat comedies, family-friendly animated features and escapist romantic dramas, is flattering on-screen comparisons; some full-blown matriarchal shit shows who will see us comfortably clearing the bar of Good Enough Mother by contrast.

If I were putting together a cross-platform content collection for Mother’s Day, I would be inspired by the pantheon of prestige-TV monster matriarchs, including some of my favourites from Arrested Development, White Lotus, The Bear, Empire and Mad Men.

Would you tell your kid he looks like a lizard in his glasses? No? You’re doing better than Lucille in Arrested Development. Are you cold, detached, competitive? All of the above? Still, you’d probably intervene if your child was walking around with a plastic bag over her head, unlike Betty in Mad Men. Have you recently driven a car into a house full of your closest relatives? No? Congrats, girl, you’re better than Donna Berzatto in The Bear.

Do you guzzle lorazepam and turn a blind eye to disturbing sexual dynamics between your children? No, again? #Yougotthismama, or at last you’ve got the edge on Victoria Ratliff in season three of The White Lotus. Did you miss your kids’ childhood due to a 17-year prison sentence for drug trafficking? You did? Not super-duper, but have you recently beaten your adult son with a broom? No? Well, you’re one up on Cookie from Empire.

Mother’s Day is not necessarily the moment to delve into why these characters do what they do, or to analyse the pathologies or unjust social conditions that may have warped their psyches. No, now might just be the moment to offer the mother in your life a cheap and nasty (but fortifying) shot of at-least-you’re-better-than-Betty-Draper. She can reckon with any feminist implications after her nap if she feels like it.

Or if she’s an unflinching, stare-into-the-sun kind of person, she can reckon with this stuff right away, in sharp focus, and with more recent releases. The past year has seen an encouraging spate of confronting extreme close-ups of women in the trenches of motherhood. If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, starring Rose Byrne, and All Her Fault, starring Sarah Snook, were two big hits considered more chilling and spiky than warm and fuzzy. It shouldn’t be a big deal, but it still is, to see maternal ambivalence and even horror right at the centre of stories told on screen.

Neither chilly nor spiky but certainly confronting at times is my current favourite, Apple TV’s Margo’s Got Money Troubles, starring Elle Fanning and Michelle Pfeiffer. It’s about a cash-strapped young mother who starts an OnlyFans account to make ends meet. Fanning is brilliant in the starring role, especially in her comedic handling of the gruesome (and sometimes analogous) physical demands of early motherhood and online sex work.

Pfeiffer is glamorous, funny and unpredictable in the role of grandmother, approaching it all with a degree of reservation and regret, tinged by the sacrifices she made as a single mother herself. The show so far (the final episode drops on May 20) is refreshing in the way it upsets preconceptions of motherhood, grandmotherhood, fatherhood, friendship and online sex work.

With its kink, energetic sex scenes and projectile body fluids, the show might not feature in any #wholesome “watch with mum” social promotions or recommendation rails this year. But it’s a story that’s both big-hearted and unwholesome, and I bet there are a lot of eyeballs, including mothers’, that are hungry for that unusual combination.

Sophie Quick is the author of The Confidence Woman. Instagram @squickens

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