It’s motherhood, but not as we know it. Or at least, not as we’re used to seeing it on TV. The five-part “motherhood anthology”, screening the night before Mother’s Day, has its genesis in a call for proposals issued by TVNZ in late 2021 to follow up 2020′s supernatural anthology Beyond the Veil, with the same aim of building capacity and surfacing talent in communities that don’t always get a look-in.
“This year’s theme is ‘motherhood’,” said the call. “We want to see bold and entertaining stories that push and subvert the narrative around mothering, motherhood and being mothered.”
Mission accomplished, then: we’ve got a Māori romcom, a dystopian robot housekeeper, a mother-and-daughter martial arts showdown, a Matariki ghost story and an underdog voguing crew. Several of the mothers are terrible at least some of the time. And nobody’s having wine time and bitching about the other mums while the kids are at school.
The most successful of the five short shows is Give Me Babies, in part because it seems to strain the least to fit its arc into the allotted 22.5 commercial minutes.
Written by Ankita Singh, creator of last year’s Auckland Theatre Company hit Basmati Bitch, and directed by six-time 48Hours finalist Calvin Sang, it hits every mark the story demands. We know that overbearing Asian mum Mei (actor and coffee influencer Celeste Wong) and frustrated daughter Ari (Roxie Mohebbi, last seen in Miles from Nowhere) are going to settle their beef and bust some gangster heads, and it’s perfect when they do.
AMAH is not quite the directorial debut for actor Michelle Ang (Neighbours and Fear the Walking Dead), or even her first film about the challenges of motherhood – she released the contemplative short Nai/Milk last year. But she and writer Angeline Loo have created an assured sci-fi tale about a rogue robot housekeeper.
There’s an obvious comparison with Black Mirror, but perhaps “Black Mirror” is its own genre now. Janet Tan, who has a history of playing aunties and grandmas, pretty much owns the screen as the alarming android.
Scotty Cotter wrote and directed Rule of Mum, his first film in his own right, but had the experience of directing 35 episodes of Shortland Street to draw on. His story of Tāne (Jayden Daniels), a 24-year-old guy whose mother is ruining his romantic ambitions, has to hurry through its character development – people come to their senses quite abruptly – but its epic party scene is the work of someone used to a lot of moving parts. Miriama Smith is perfectly terrible as the mum.
Rule of Mum is one of two episodes of the anthology funded by Te Māngai Pāho rather than NZ On Air. The other is Ahi & The Stars, a moving, mysterious ghost story by Angela Cudd that feels a bit more like it’s part of Beyond the Veil than the rambunctious anthology it’s in.
And then there’s Mother Hood, featuring the capers of a flawed but feisty group in Auckland’s ballroom voguing scene. Jaycee Tanuvasa, who created and directed it with Harry McNaughton (writer of last year’s miniseries The Pact), is herself the real-life mother of Auckland’s House of Iman and the show is crammed with the language, culture and humour of the city’s young, brown, queer scene. It’s probably the most challenging of the five for a mainstream viewing audience and the most likely to spawn the ongoing story of a group of Scooby-Doo-style ballroom battlers.
There is a lot of talent here, away from the structures and styles of the big-screen production houses, and a few pointers as to where our creative culture may be heading. There are also, clearly, many ways of thinking about motherhood.
Motherhood, TVNZ 2, 7.30pm, Saturday, May 11 & TVNZ+
