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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