Not all screen mums are saints. Some smoke, scheme, lie, drink, shout – and steal scenes. In this mums' gallery, we take a lighthearted look at the mean, messy and memorably complicated mums of Australian film and TV. Whether they’re terrifying crime bosses, glamorously indifferent narcissists, or just at their wits’ end, these matriarchs are a far cry from the sentimental stereotypes. Meet the screen mums you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley – or at a dinner party.
‘You’ve done some bad things, sweetie’
Loosely based on the Pettingill family of Melbourne, who were allegedly involved in the 1988 Walsh Street police shootings, David Michôd’s Animal Kingdom (2010) stars a roll-call of Australian talent, including Ben Mendelsohn, Guy Pearce and Joel Edgerton. But the scene stealer is the Cody family’s matriarch, Janine (played by Jacki Weaver). She might be small, she might be cute, she might be nicknamed Smurf – but never, ever cross her.
In this scene, Smurf meets with Randall (Justin Rosniak), a bent cop from the drug squad, and convinces him to raid the safe house where her grandson, J, is living. She’s acting to protect her sons, who may be convicted when J testifies at their trial. Smurf’s doe eyes and gentle, reasoning voice, her sky-blue hippie top, the grandmotherly gesture as she wipes her nose with a tissue, form an unsettling contrast to her intentions. The masterly twist of Weaver’s face as she says, ‘I’m not trying to tell you how to… suck eggs’ encapsulates Smurf’s saccharine-and-cyanide affect, and the funereal organ music of Antony Partos’ score further signals the dark purpose of her manipulation. Weaver was nominated for an Academy Award for this performance, which catapulted her into a late-in-life Hollywood career.
This lioness in lamb’s clothing will do anything to protect what’s precious to her, even at the expense of her own flesh-and-blood.
Jacki Weaver in Animal Kingdom (David Michôd, 2010). NFSA title: 797300
‘Revolting in the extreme’
Mean daughter, mean friend – and mean mum. Self-styled foxymoron Kim (Gina Riley) always has a snide aside for her mother Kath (Jane Turner) and her ‘second-best friend’ Sharon (Magda Szubanski). It’s no surprise that she’d be a less-than-doting mother. But in a flash-forward episode of Kath & Kim, ‘99% Fat Free’ (2004), Kim gets a taste of her own vitriol from her daughter, Epponnee-Raelene Kathleen Darlene Charlene, or ‘Eps’ (played by Kylie Minogue in a hornbag version of the wedding dress she wore as Charlene in Neighbours). When Kim snipes at her daughter about her ‘welcome mat’, Eps lashes right back at Kim’s ‘leg o’ mutton sloives’ in a pitch-perfect Fountain Lakes accent. As Kim predicted over her crib, Epponnee-Rae has inherited her personality.
This flash-forward episode skewers generational image obsession and the tyranny of taste, giving us layers of mother-daughter tension, capped with a bite from Kath, Kim’s own mum. Minogue proves her comic timing against two of Australia’s comedy greats, making this a stand-out moment in Australian comedy.
Kath & Kim had a relatively short run – from 2002 to 2005 on the ABC, with a subsequent season on Channel 7 in 2009, as well as two films and various specials – but its brilliant characterisations and word play and its spot-on cultural commentary have cemented it in Australian hearts, with its various catch cries (‘Look at mooooooy’, ‘It’s nice, it’s different, it’s unusual’, ‘Ya great hunk o’ spunk’) enshrined in the vernacular.
Kylie Minogue as Epponnee-Rae in Kath & Kim: 99 Per Cent Fat Free, 2004. NFSA: 717832
‘There’s more drama living in this house than living out of it!’
In 1992, reality TV was unknown in Australia. When Sylvania Waters premiered that year, audiences tuned in out of curiosity – and stayed to gawp, to laugh and to judge. The show centred on a family in an affluent Sydney suburb, particularly on Noeline Donaher and her partner Laurie, who ran a successful business together but were mainly depicted rowing, boozing, smoking, and sailing their boat, the Blasé.
Although such naivety is barely credible in the 2020s, Noeline and her family had no idea that the five months of footage shot in their home would be cut into 12 episodes carefully edited for maximum drama, playing up the couple’s drinking and their friction with Noeline’s eldest son, who was struggling financially with his pregnant girlfriend. Experiencing the cruel reactions as the program aired was traumatic (Noeline claimed it drove her to the brink of suicide), and when it was over the family went on a number of talk shows to tell their side of the story; Noeline also wrote a book, The Sylvania Waters Diary.
During their 1992 appearance on The Midday Show, we see some clips from Sylvania Waters. In the opening moments of the first episode, Noeline’s teenage son, Michael, narrates an introduction over syrupy strings that evoke the idyllic domestic scenes of 1950s commercials. There is a cut to Noeline, who warns us, ‘You’re going to see me as I am – as me. I’m me! I can’t be nice, and I can’t be Joan Collins… I’m me.’ Later on in the episode, there is a heated spat between her and Laurie. Noeline threatens to pack her bags, shouting, ‘There’s more drama living in this house than living out of it!’ – immediately framed by the show as a brassy loudmouth.
In this appearance on The Midday Show, one of their first after Sylvania Waters ended, Noeline, Laurie and Michael stride onto the stage to ‘The Toreador’s Song’ from Carmen, establishing a triumphal air, and despite Noeline’s vulnerability as she describes her ordeal, their mood is defiant. She would go on to record a cover of the Walker Brothers’ 'No Regrets'; the clip showed her in a sapphire ballgown, waltzing with Laurie by the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
During the Midday Show appearance, Noeline, shown crying on Hard Copy, says, ‘I don’t think there’s anything else that could be written about me in my life. Except, perhaps, the day I die.’ When she did die, in 2023, it took a year for the media to notice. In only three decades, reality TV had so swamped the world that her notoriety had vanished without a trace.
Interview with Sylvania Waters cast. The Midday Show, 9 October 1992. NFSA title: 1733999
‘Take your clothes off’
Arthritic, alcoholic, snarling at her estranged daughter, Molly Dunnage (played with haggish gusto by Judy Davis) is no poster mother. In The Dressmaker (2015), Tilly (Kate Winslet) comes back to a town full of painful memories just to care for her, but gets little thanks for it. Mother and daughter snap and battle for most of the film, and Molly scoffs at Tilly’s new glamour and her couture creations. But in this scene, we see her soften – and engineer a steamy moment between Tilly and Teddy McSwiney (Liam Hemsworth).
Teddy, who’s come to be measured for a suit, is really there to convince Tilly she should let her guard down with him. Molly plays along, urging him to take his clothes off and putting ‘Bali Ha'i’ on the phonograph. She rewards herself for her matchmaking skill by filching the contents of Teddy’s hip flask for an improvised cocktail.
Although the chemistry between Winslet and Hemsworth is volcanic, director Jocelyn Moorhouse keeps the focus on the interplay between mother and daughter. In one particularly comic composition, Tilly and Molly spar gently in the foreground, unaware that Teddy has stripped off. The choreography of their glances at him and to each other when they do realise is worthy of 1930s screwball comedy.
The Dressmaker ends in tragedy, but before its bitter end, Molly admits, ‘She does work magic, my girl.’
Judy Davis, Liam Hemsworth and Kate Winslet in an excerpt from The Dressmaker (Jocelyn Moorhouse, 2015). NFSA title: 1430033
‘Free-range? Helicopter? SMUM?’
In ‘Frankenstein’ (2017), the first episode of the newborn-centred Netflix comedy The Letdown, we meet the central character Audrey (Alison Bell) as she gets into an argument with an officious mother who wants her parking-spot. The opening scene ends with Audrey yelling obscenities – then apologising to her baby daughter. Ruined by sleeplessness, constantly questioning her worth, Audrey is in a state of swing between tears and furious irritation at the smug mums in her mother’s group, which drives her to ever-more elaborate one-upping lies. She’s not mean as such, but she’s certainly at screaming point.
In this scene at a bookshop, Audrey gets into a face-palming fix when she’s caught browsing the parental help section, having previously boasted, ‘I don’t need the books.’ The Letdown’s writers, Bell and Sarah Scheller, take aim at an industry that invents terms – tiger mother, crummy mummy, attachment style – designed to make women feel inadequate. We wonder, along with Audrey, ‘Who comes up with this stuff?’
The Letdown looks unflinchingly at the raw trauma involved in raising a baby. But this is, after all, a comedy, and by the end of the episode Audrey has worked her way through a controlled-crying disaster with her partner and is soothing her little monster with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
Scene from The Letdown, 'Frankenstein', 2018. NFSA title: 1558502
‘Well, what could be more perfect?’
Elizabeth Bligh, played by Noni Hazlehurst, is the formidable matriarch of A Place to Call Home, an upmarket soap opera with luscious production values that aired on the Seven Network from 2013 to 2018. Elizabeth, hellbent on keeping up appearances, ruthlessly suppresses her grandson’s homosexuality, rejects her free-spirited daughter, and meddles in the relationship between her son and a Jewish woman. Over the arc of the series, Elizabeth’s conventional values are challenged, and she becomes a gentler, more open person. But she can still get back on her high horse when she sniffs a challenge to her family.
In this scene, from the fourth series of A Place to Call Home, Elizabeth goes head-to-scheming-head with Regina (Jenni Baird), a psychopath who’s made a marriage of convenience with her son George, an aspiring politician. Regina has arranged a dinner with the prime minister, but her moment of triumph is ruined by Elizabeth’s unexpected arrival. In a cross between musical chairs and a chess match, she deftly takes control of the room, replacing Regina at the head of the table, depriving her of a seat next to the prime minister, and thoroughly check-mating her.
The conventions of soap opera – the villainess in the scarlet dress, the mother-in-law establishing her power, a dinner party with undercurrents – are given a sophisticated treatment, and an extra charge from Hazlehurst’s queenly performance.
Scene from A Place to Call Home, Season 4, Episode 4, 2016. NFSA title: 1670336
‘Eyes ahead, and don’t look down’
Is she a mum? No. Is she mean? Of course not! So what is she doing on this list? Well, it never hurts to revisit the gentle world of Romper Room, which mesmerised pre-schoolers in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s. Miss Helena was one of a series of female hosts who took their tiny charges through a series of kindy-style activities, learning good behaviour from Mr Doo Bee, drinking their milk and, of course, singing the hits: ‘Oh Come With Us and Gallop’, ‘Punch a Ball’ and ‘Bend and Stretch’.
One segment that hasn’t aged so well is ‘The Posture Basket Song’. In this rendition of it, we see Miss Helena training an all-girl group of pre-schoolers in correct posture by making them balance baskets on their head. Not amazingly, they are all terrible at it, and there’s lots of confused little faces as they struggle with the task. This Victorian-coded exercise was part of a general trend in Romper Room towards nice, compliant children who played quietly, sat up straight and tall and were ‘mother’s little helpers’.
Contemporary views of child-rearing lean towards giving kids more freedom, but many of today’s parents cherish fond memories of Miss Helena and Romper Room.
Incidentally, Miss Helena is a mother – of four children, with her late husband Mike Bailey, a popular TV weather presenter – and, we’re sure, a very lovely one.
Excerpt from Romper Room, episode 82/236, 1982. Courtesy: Seven Network. NFSA title: 749927
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Main image: Noni Hazlehurst as Elizabeth in A Place to Call Home (2016). NFSA title: 1670336
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