Mother and Son vs Mother and Son

The other day, the Sydney Morning Herald published an article called Is the new Mother and Son already better than the original? Our reviewer says yes. It’s a legitimate question to ask about Matt Okine’s remake of the fondly remembered 80s/90s sitcom, although it’s notable that the SMH didn’t ask it when series one dropped two years ago.

We’re guessing the SMH didn’t ask it because the first series of Okine’s remake of Mother and Son wasn’t that great. Amongst other problems, it spent way too much time trying to be a realistic dramedy, showing the emotional impact of the mental decline of mother Maggie (Denise Scott) on son Arthur (Okine) rather than being a funny show about two people stuck together. Quite a contrast to the original version, written by Geoffrey Atherden, which was 100% going for laughs, even when the jokes about Maggie’s dementia were a bit much for some members of the audience.

Having said that, the second series of Okine’s Mother and Son is funnier than the first. Episode one, in particular, felt like it was within touching distance of being a classic farce, with mother, son and the rest of the family ensnared in a series of escalating lies that almost tore them apart.

But the rest of Mother and Son series two hasn’t managed to maintain that level of quality. So, why is the SMH talking up it? Here are a few excerpts from the article; perhaps you can identify the theme…

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.

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 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.

…

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.

Yeah, we get it, the reviewer prefers Okine’s version because it’s relatable to them. They also fail to say much about Atherden’s original, which, we’re guessing, means they haven’t seen much of it, let alone engaged with the idea that it was resonant with audiences at the time.

One thing we do know about comedy about Boomers and Millennials, though, is that Matt Okine’s Mother and Son is hardly on its own for tackling the topic. Australian comedies that have covered Boomers and Millennials, the housing crisis and how capitalism is screwing younger generations over the past decade include, but are not limited to, Tonightly, At Home Alone Together, various episodes of Fresh Blood, a number of Mark Humphries’ sketches for 7.30, some of the better guest segments on The Weekly with Charlie Pickering and, to an extent, Talkin’ ‘Bout Your Gen. In fact, it’s hard to think of topics that have inspired more Australian comedy in the past decade. Apart from maybe that period when Sydney comedians were obsessed with bin chickens.

So, that article on the SMH is bunk, basically. There possibly is an argument to be made that Matt Okine’s Mother and Son is better than the original, but it isn’t “I’m a Millennial and I understand this”. Things might be funny because you can relate to them, but not everything that’s relatable is funny.