Mother and Son (2023 TV series)

Mother and Son is an Australian television sitcom reboot of the series of the same name broadcast on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) since 23 August 2023. The series stars Denise Scott and Matt Okine as Maggie and Arthur, respectively.

Filming for the series began in Sydney in March 2023. Unlike the original series which filmed on a sound stage with a multi-camera setup with an audience, the series is filmed as a single-camera setup.

Plot
Following a breakup from his long-suffering girlfriend, Arthur puts his future on hold to move back home with his widowed mother, Maggie. Arthur and his older sister, Robbie, attempt to care for Maggie, who may recently have almost burnt down the kitchen, but still runs circles around her children.

Cast

 * Matt Okine as Arthur Boye
 * Denise Scott as Maggie Boye
 * Angela Nica Sullen as Robbie
 * Catherine Văn-Davies as Maya
 * Andrea Demetriades as Dee
 * Virginia Gay as Liz

Development
The series is a "fresh reimagining" of the original sitcom Mother and Son, which starred Garry McDonald as Arthur and Ruth Cracknell as Maggie, and ran from 1984 to 1994 on the ABC. The rebooted series was developed and funded by Screen Australia and Screen NSW. Original series creator Geoffrey Atherden collaborated with Matt Okine to create the new series.

Matt Okine had wished to create a reboot of Mother and Son since 2013, when he had been touring Hong Kong with Denise Scott, who would later play Maggie in the series. Okine admired the original series, describing it as "a beautiful snapshot of 1980s Australian suburbia, made hilariously unforgettable by its co-stars Ruth Cracknell and Garry McDonald". Although he acknowledged that he and Scott had "huge shoes to fill", Okine was optimistic that the series could work: "With my hairline going the way it is, I feel like I was born to play a 2023 version of Arthur!"

Jennifer Collins, the Acting Director of Entertainment and Specialist for the ABC, revealed that the idea of a reboot of the original series had been "around for quite some time" and described the new series as being "a long time in the making". She noted that the series was "not something that has just been cooked up. It's something that's been given a lot of love and attention, detail and thought."

Filming
Filming for the series began in March 2023 and took place in southwest Sydney. Okine chose this location because he wanted to use a realistic setting for where Arthur Boye's father would have moved from Ghana in the 1970s, as Sydney has been noted for being a culturally diverse city. Maggie's house is located in the Sydney suburb of Dolls Point.

One of the first aspects of the series that Okine considered was whether the series would be shot using a single-camera or multi-camera format. Ultimately, Okine chose to film the series using a single-camera format because he did not wish the series to be stuck in 1980s Australia; he wished to distance the series from the original and reasoned that modern sitcoms no longer use the single-camera studio format.

Future
In November 2023, the ABC's Chief Content Officer Chris Oliver-Taylor revealed that a second series of Mother and Son is currently in development: "The numbers were okay, I think we would have liked a bit more, but this is one of the most iconic ABC shows of all time. I want the show to have the respect it deserves and see if we can find an audience across two series. Now, whether it will finance or whether it will creatively develop, I don’t know." He cited that no new series would be produced for 2024. Instead, the producers wished to give the second series "the best shot" for a 2025 release.

Reception
Reviews for the series were mixed. A reviewer on The Guardian Australia wrote that, "As a remake it's lacklustre (and not a patch on the original), but as its own production, doing its own thing, it’s modestly entertaining." He went on to conclude that, "The new Mother and Son is at its best when focusing on interpersonal dynamics and snarky back-and-forth between the titular characters. Scott and Okine both do a good job, bringing likability and some charisma. But talk about a poisoned chalice. The genius of McDonald and Cracknell is even more apparent now that others have performed in their shadows."

A Sydney Morning Herald reviewer wrote that, "For a sitcom, this Mother and Son is not necessarily funny; in fact, it's low-key depressing. A lot of the gags sit there without a sharp pay-off, lending the series […] a flat energy that might be the best argument yet for the return of the TV laugh track." However, he continued to write that, "The series feels significant in broaching those icky topics we'd often rather ignore," and concluded by acknowledging that, "The show's overarching pleasantness is reason to stick with it [...] Despite its famous template, this version feels like a breath of fresh air."