Mom, ITV2 - TV review

There's a clash of cheery tone and dark subject matter that makes Mom oddly appealing

With Amy Poehler's Parks and Recreation coming to an end after seven series, there's an opening for a new upbeat TV heroine to replace Leslie Knope and Christy (Anna Faris) from ITV 2's Mom should definitely be in the running.

Admittedly, Mom is from the same team that cursed us with the dreadful, but massively successful, Two and a Half Men – and it shows. The dialogue is rarely witty enough to justify the hearty canned guffaws, yet there's a clash of cheery tone and dark subject matter that makes Mom oddly appealing, nonetheless.

In this first episode of the second series, Christy, a single mum and recovering alcoholic, had become an AA sponsor to Jill (Jaime Pressly), but wasn't quite leading by example. Having gambled away the rent money, she debated alternative options for saving the family from destitution. Her own mother Bonnie (Allison Janney) has a suggestion: "If you were drunk you could bang the landlord and we wouldn't be homeless." Only in Mom would such a predicament be comedy.