Mostly, I prefer TV that doesn’t feel too real. I like sci-fi, glossy period drama, cosy crime – stories and scenarios that don’t challenge me too much. Since the pandemic; since I had children; since I got older and began to confront avoid my own mortality; since I worked in an office and became a worn-out shell of a human; since I left university and discovered that life is a bit of a grind, I just don’t have the bandwidth to cope. Waiting for my youngest son outside school the other day, another mum confessed to me that she doesn’t read any new books, only old ones she’s read before. ‘I can’t do any new emotions,’ she said, and I knew exactly what she meant.

Real things are too challenging, make me think too much and feel too much. So, in general, my TV viewing stays tucked up in the comfort blanket of shows like Bridgerton, Death in Paradise and Star Trek. For any of you scoffing, those are all excellent TV series, and I’m not talking about them as guilty pleasures. I don’t have guilty pleasures, in any aspect of culture. However, it’s true to say I take greatest pleasure in the more frivolous, fantastic side of entertainment. I want to pretend the world is brighter, prettier, and more advanced than it really is. I’m an ostrich. But there’s one show that feels, for me, the best and most pleasing kind of real – a real that I can cope with, and find joy in. It speaks to me; it sees me; it frees me. It’s Motherland.

I can’t gush about this show enough. Whenever I watch something I really love, I am compelled to contact the creators and tell them how much I adore it. As it happens, I know one of the Executive Producers slightly, so got in touch via Facebook to enthuse about Series 3, and discovered that the last time I contacted her… was to rave about Series 2. In preparation for the latest instalment, I re-watched Series 1, just to check it was as good as I remembered. Guess what? It was better. I cried twice; all the best comedies should make you cry occasionally. The best way for you to discover the brilliance of Motherland is to watch it, but if you’d like me to prepare the playground for you, here goes.

Motherland stars the wondrous Anna Maxwell Martin as Julia, a harassed mum of two who might as well be single, because her husband Paul is useless, and her own mother is tired of helping her out. Maxwell Martin brings a rictus John Cleese hair-tearing quality to Julia, who actually isn’t very nice. This is one of my favourite things about the show – the fact that Julia is a bit of a self-centred cow whose central characteristic is the shameless pursuit of people to take her kids off her hands. It’s terrible, but oh-so-relatable, as is Julia’s variable and sometimes appalling dress sense. When she’s at work, she’s fairly presentable, but when she’s with her family, she’s a total mess, like she just doesn’t give a toss. In a previous series, I remember hooting at her jeans tucked into socks and thinking that she was my fashion idol. When you consider Maxwell Martin’s turn as Patricia Carmichael in Line of Duty – tightly coiffed and tight-lipped – this is a revelation. Recently, the Daily Mail confessed itself amazed that she could pretend to be two such different beings – I enjoyed the Vile getting its thick head around the concept of acting, but to be fair, she’s taking the profession to a whole new level, and I am loving her work.

There are two tribes in Motherland – Julia is in the Beta group, with single mum Liz, played by Diane Morgan. I’m a big fan of Morgan’s flat, laconic delivery – she’s basically playing a more knowing Philomena Cunk dumped at the school gates, and it works wonderfully. Liz provides Julia’s entrée to a lower echelon of the parenting network, along with Kevin, a stay-at-home dad who occasionally makes pathetic attempts to infiltrate the Alpha group of mums, led by uber-bitch Amanda.

I think Amanda might be my favourite character of all, and not just because she dresses her son as Connell from Normal People for World Book Day. Amanda is awful – a thinly-veiled hellcat who looks at everyone, particularly Kevin, like they just crawled out from a piss-filled ball pit. Lucy Punch is magnificent in this role, but crucially, what elevates it beyond mere malevolence is the occasional segue into poignancy. There’s a moment in the first series when she’s casually dismissed by an old beau who she fondly/arrogantly imagines still lusts after her, and her discomfited expression as she comes to terms with the slight is beautifully done. In the latest series, Amanda’s mother is played by Joanna Lumley – an excruciatingly apt piece of casting – and there’s a fabulous scene where they go out to lunch, and Lumley’s delicious loathsomeness gives a whole new smoking-hot take on Amanda’s character. These fleeting moments of sympathy for the devil are what make Motherland a cut above.

Some of the scenarios are wince-inducing sitcomery at its finest. Julia attempting to crowbar her daughter into a church school by muttering random Latin phrases in front of an unimpressed nun made me yearn to set fire to myself with the prayer candle – which she merrily blows out, having delivered her Hail Marys. Similarly, Julia’s mortifying attempts to flirt with her builder Garry made me want to gouge my eyes out with a screwdriver, although I fully understand why someone re-tiling your bathroom is extremely seductive.

As ever in this series, the kids are barely seen or heard – like their parents, Motherland has no time for them. Even during an epic failure of a school trip (featuring Sonia from EastEnders!), the focus is on the adults; their squabbles, domestic logistics, snide remarks thrown across a vomit-drenched bus. The children always take a back seat. There’s a moment in the first series where Julia is making a (terrible) Minions cake for her daughter Ivy’s birthday party – Ivy attempts to sneak a finger of icing and is irritably swatted away by her mother. I HAVE BEEN THERE. I HAVE DONE THAT. I’ve attended church despite being an atheist, in a risible attempt to get my son into the C of E school. I’ve developed inappropriate and inarticulate fondness for handymen – they’re so useful and clever. I’ve tried to palm my kids off on people. I’m never out of my duvet-coat and have worn Arctic Muck Boots throughout lockdown and beyond because they’re so comfy and I’ve forgotten how to wear proper shoes.

Motherland gets me, reflects me at my worst, makes me feel better. It’s hilariously, embarrassingly, grotesquely real, simultaneously putting me to shame, and helping me realise I’m not alone. There are Julias everywhere, scrabbling to arrange childcare, trying and failing to put in the hours at work, chauffeuring their kids, helicoptering their kids, smothering their kids, ignoring their kids, making shit cakes. Forget having it all - Julia is just trying to have a glass of wine in peace and do her e-mails while someone paints her hallway finial. Who cares about a few nits? It’s a parenting/life low bar that is profoundly comforting.

This is the kind of real I can deal with, and revel in. Plus, the latest series ends with possibly the greatest line I have ever heard in a sitcom. I don’t want to give anything away, because if you haven’t seen it then I want you to enjoy Motherland in all its glory, savour every agonizing moment. But I will tell you that there’s a point during a fundraiser where Julia makes a lewd gesture while uttering the words ‘actual vagina hole’, and my pelvic floor couldn’t take it. Like I said, I can’t gush about this show enough.

I might have to go and watch it all over again. Will someone look after my kids for me?

• Motherland, 3 series plus a Christmas special, BBC iPlayer