The BAFTA-winning creative team behind Amandaland have revealed secrets behind separating the hit BBC spin-off from its origin series, Motherland.

Speaking at the BBC Comedy Festival, co-creator Holly Walsh said the secret lies in the characters, especially the lead, played by Lucy Punch in a performance that has been hailed far and wide. In Motherland, Amanda was sharper and more cartoonish than the version that leads her own show, which won the BAFTA over the weekend for Best Scripted Comedy and had three of its stars nominated.

“We broadened her out and warmed her up,” said co-creator Laurence Rickard. “She is a woman who cares about her friends and family, and is also just immensely shallow and awful. So we needed both of those things. You get the best comedy out of her when she is terrible but behind the veneer is a genuinely nice human being.”

Walsh said Amanda was the “easiest” character to spin off as you can “punch up.” “You can make so many more jokes about someone who thinks she’s better than you,” she added.

Rickard said there was a “warmth and broadness” in the pilot that was “slightly different from Motherland.” The critically-acclaimed Motherland, which was co-created by Graham Linehan and Sharon Horgan amongst others, ran for three seasons. Amandaland has so far run for two and yesterday was commissioned for a third after becoming one of the BBC’s most-watched comedies of the decade. Paul Feig attempted to remake Motherland in the States but the ABC pilot didn’t make it to series.

“We didn’t want to just do Kevin again”

‘Motherland’

BBC/Merman

The secret to separating the spin-off also lay in the ensemble, Walsh added. “We had to create a new ensemble of people who hadn’t been in Motherland,” she added. “We didn’t want to just do Kevin [Paul Ready’s character in Motherland] again. We had to really dig deep for that.”

She pointed to characters like Mal and JJ, played by Samuel Anderson and Ekow Quartey, who play a dad and step-dad of the same teenager who “are a parenting couple, and we wanted that to be the dynamic,” Walsh said. “It felt like a really fun angle,” she added. “We were trying to find different approaches through parenting.”

The team were speaking at the Comedy Festival after James Corden and Ruth Jones.

Speaking at the BAFTAs last week, Walsh said her dream Amandaland guest is Melania Trump. “She’s America’s Amanda,” joked Walsh on Sunday.