Barunka O'Shaughnessy is a sharp collaborative comedy writer, particularly good on social competition and unkind language. We recommend Amandaland warmly, while Hunderby sometimes lets cruelty get ahead of the joke.
Fi1m perspective
In Amandaland (2025), Lucy Punch makes a snob's determination to remain impressive funny enough to sustain our interest. Amanda is a useful character for Barunka O'Shaughnessy: someone whose concern with appearances gives a comedy plenty to work with. We laughed hardest at Joanna Lumley's cruelty, which supplies the programme's most cutting jokes. O'Shaughnessy co-created the series with Holly Walsh and Helen Serafinowicz, and it gives us good reason to follow her writing.
Her move from sketch performance into screenwriting in the mid-2000s helps explain her attention to dialogue that gives actors something to play. Her collaboration with Julia Davis included script editing as well as co-writing on Hunderby (2012), a period comedy whose carefully chosen, unkind language provides its strongest laughs. The phrasing matters: making a remark more unpleasant does not automatically make it funnier. Enough of the writing gets that distinction right for us to recommend it to anyone with a taste for discomfort. Some gags ask for more tolerance than they earn.
Joining Motherland for its second series in 2019 put her among writers dealing with competitive middle-class parenthood. The later move to Amandaland meant helping to build a whole programme around Amanda, while retaining the earlier comedy's interest in social aspiration. Co-creating and writing the thriller The Teacher (2022) took her beyond comedy, but our recommendation rests on the comic writing.
Our preference is for Amandaland, where Punch's snobbery gives the comedy a clear centre. The wider ensemble takes more effort to feel like a group, and that matters in a series built around social life. It is a limitation worth stating without allowing it to obscure how funny the central character remains. Start there, and choose Hunderby when carefully phrased nastiness sounds like a pleasant evening.
Biography
Barunka O'Shaughnessy is a British actress, writer and producer. Born in August 1973 in Kingston upon Thames, she studied Theology and Classics at the University of Cambridge, where she began performing comedy.
After early work in television production and forming the theatre company Population: 3 with Lucy Montgomery and James Bachman, she appeared in sketch shows and series including The Mighty Boosh (2004) and Extras (2005). As a writer she has contributed to Hunderby (2012–2015), Up the Women (2015) and Motherland (2016–2022), and created and wrote episodes of the Motherland spin-off Amandaland (2025).
She has also worked as an executive producer on several of her writing projects.
