Russell Howard & Mum: USA Road Trip is a series where a comedian goes on holiday with his mum, and hilarious consequences ensue. It is exactly the same as all the other series where comedians go on holiday with their mum and hilarious consequences ensue. At current count, these series number into the thousands.
Normally I’d be scornful of this show, and its lazy travelogue-by-numbers depiction of America as a land of guns and rappers and nothing else. But today is awful, and seeing people have a nice time with their mums is actually quite a comfort. Here are the best and worst shows that have ever paired comedians with their parents.
The best
Romesh Ranganathan: Asian Provocateur
By far the most successful of the current glut is BBC Three’s Asian Provocateur. This is partly because the series – where Ranganathan takes his mother back to Sri Lanka – genuinely feels like an exploration and not just a checklist of comic beats. It’s partly because Ranganathan’s greatest strength is his deadpan ability to react. But, mainly, it’s down to the breathtaking way his mother steals the show out from underneath him. Shanthi Ranganathan, you are a star.
David Letterman and his mother
Whole rafts of American talkshow hosts have brought a parent onboard – Craig Ferguson did it, Seth Meyers and James Corden still do it – but the gold standard remains David Letterman, purely for the uncomfortable psychodrama of it all. Watching them together, you always got the sense that Letterman was straining for an approval he never quite got. When he screams “I’m doing the best I can, Mom!” towards the end of this clip, you sense it’s not entirely in jest.
Adam Buxton: BaaadDad
Arguably the progenitor of the entire genre. The greatest moments of The Adam and Joe Show came when it was handed over to Nigel Buxton, former travel editor of the Daily Telegraph and Adam Buxton’s father. Although the premise was to put an old man in a number of excruciatingly youthful situations, Nigel always managed to deftly avoid becoming the butt of the joke. A tricky feat to pull off, but the Buxtons managed it.
The worst
50 Ways to Kill Your Mammy
This isn’t a bad series in itself – when it fires on all cylinders, it can actually be quite life-affirming – but it ends up here because of all it created. By forcing his elderly mum into a series of global white-knuckle experiences, it felt like Baz Ashmawy was ruthlessly attempting to create a new Karl Pilkington figure. This was done so brazenly that it strips the show of its charm. Worse still, it made every other comedian want to have a go.
Russell Howard & Mum: USA Road Trip
The best instances of comedian-parent partnerships come when the parents are distinct enough from their offspring to create tension. The biggest problem with Russell Howard & Mum: USA Road Trip is that Russell Howard’s mother is basically identical to him. She’s normal, she’s fun, she’s game for anything. None of these are bad qualities for a mum to have, but they don’t exactly make for thrilling TV.
Jack Whitehall: Backchat
Sometimes, though, the tension is so overdone that it doesn’t quite sell. Believe Jack Whitehall and you’d think his father Michael was an ultra-conservative, fogeyish retired bombardier. In truth, he’s a wildly successful – and, if his memoirs are any indication, very funny – theatrical agent steeped in the vagaries of showbusiness. On Backchat, the BBC chatshow they presented together, Michael basically played Jack’s caricature of him and it was almost uniformly unconvincing.
