Mum Got Sick On Our Holiday review

The setup

His wife has been ill since landing, courtesy of some suspect prawns, so the stepdad gets a new job: keep his stepdaughter Harriet entertained. His wife trusts him, and he responds by rambling about the size of his hands. Harriet asks for sunscreen on her back, normally her mother's job, then notes he has skipped the front. His inner monologue spirals. She covers for him on a call with her mother, terribly, and pitches a curtained beach bed billed to her mother. It ends with him wondering, far too late, whether he should refuse.

Episode 2

His objection that she should not be in there earns a three-year confession: while the wedding guests watched him dance with her mother, she watched him, and has wondered since. His narration reels at how badly he misread her. She demands he say it, concedes the phrasing worked better in her imagination, and cites the holiday code; he stalls on her mother, and she reads the answer anyway. Then his wife calls, craving cookies, and they buy ten minutes.

Who's who

• The stepdad: a decent man narrating his own panic, mostly about his hands
• Harriet: his stepdaughter, cheerfully shameless and a hopeless liar on the phone to her mother
• His wife: felled by prawns, offscreen, and far too trusting of both of them

Verdict: 7.0 out of 10

Comedy saves it. The premise is a standard stepdad setup, but the writing gives him a wonderfully self-sabotaging voice, correcting his own description of his hands in real time, and Harriet's awful phone alibi is the best gag. Episode 2 keeps the jokes coming, and his wife's appetite returning at the worst possible moment is a perfect sitcom sting. Anyone who laughed at the hands will find the paid rest an easy sell.

Episode guide