Mum on BBC Two is the new Gavin and Stacey

Season two of the BBC's charming, comfortable comedy Mum returns to BBC Two this week, just in time to offer comedy fans somewhere to turn now that the marvellous Derry Girls has finished on Channel 4.

With soft, heart-warming humour, poor Cathy (Lesley Manville) is a now 60-year-old woman surrounded by a bunch of insane relatives and chronically constipated wannabe-lovers.

Season two follows Cathy and her family as they move further away from the death of her husband in season one and new storylines involving boastful, negligent neighbours and well-meaning but inevitably hopeless children, girlfriends of children and possible new flames arise.



Expect lots of Gavin and Stacey style British humour – raised eyebrows, the flaring of a nostril and a tight-lipped back handed compliment – as our titular Mum finds herself crippled by her own Englishness, and stuck suffering the insanities of all those around her without feeling able to point out how rude, stupid, mean spirited and incompetent everybody is.

Offering us a charming insight into a dysfunctional but still loving middle-England family Mum is deeply gentle and understated in its humour.

Joined by Peter Mullan, Sam Swainsbury, Lisa McGrillis, Dorothy Atkinson, Ross Boatman, Karl Johnson and Marlene Sidaway, this lovely British comedy deserves to be a bigger hit than it is. Get onboard now before the rest of the world starts talking about it and Lesley Manville finds herself presenting a late night TV show in the US.