Mum
'Mum' is back for its third and final season.
BBC 2, Wednesdays, 10pm.
Stars Lesley Manville as the eponymous Mum.
I didn't watch series one. It didn't jump out at me from the TV schedules, and maybe it clashed with something else, I don't know.
However, I came across series two by accident, when I was ill in bed, and to be honest, I was riveted.
When series two finished, I got series one up on iPlayer and binge-watched it.
It's compelling.
It's very, very gentle, and very slow-moving. That's part of its charm.
It's about a very, very ordinary, more-than-middle-aged, suburban woman who is trying to make sense of her life after she was widowed...more than two years ago, now.
Mum is surrounded by people who are equally flawed and equally vulnerable, in their own very different ways. The unempathic son and his very dim fiancée, the very insecure brother and his tartar of a partner, the selfish in-laws, ........and the long-suffering, long-smitten, very quiet and very old friend with whom a gently burgeoning love story is very slowly unfolding.
As I said, the supporting characters all have very different flaws, but they are all suffering from their own demons, which Mum is aware of, and tolerates, at the expense of her own feelings a lot of the time.
Roll on Wednesday!