Remember when you watched those comedy panel shows on TV and there was the 5 guys and one woman…. & then gradually things improved & there were two women! Women began to get their own headline spots at comedy clubs & a few did TV. Soon there were 3 – & Katherine Ryan and Sarah Millican and Angela Barnes were the new wave and then comediennes started to go a bit deeper!
In the USA Amy Schumer and especially the I Moms So Hard videos by Kristin Hensley & Jen Smedley started relaying stories about pregnancy, caesarians, potty training and embracing their post partum bodies….
The UK did follow but a few years later! Recently brilliant female comics thought their comedy careers might be over if they got pregnant so often told nobody!
But then ….Holly Walsh co created Motherland for TV which pushed what you could say – on mainstream TV – & Brighton based Jen Brister & Josie Long broke through with taboo breaking stories about real women’s lives.
And now mother of four Katherine Kenway BREAKS EVERY TABOO there is about MOTHERHOOD & what female comedians can joke about. Nothing is held back in this, an entire show about motherhood.
The largely female audience contributed their own answers to Kathy’s questions which basically amount to WHY THE HELL DO WE WOMEN DO IT! It’s funny & full of sharp one liners but it’s also pretty deep.
All the big issues that women discuss women to women are on show, why on earth would you have four, does having just one kid really merit the title of parent at all?! And the graphic details of varying childbirths are somehow funny!
The show could equally be called Muthering Lows but as the wine sipping Katherine Kenway jogged off to the great Kate Bush song we knew she was coming home & Muthering Heights was the right title.
