American Housewife S1-2

Update: American Housewife is no longer on Showmax. Find your next series binge here.

The hardest thing about a new suburb is finding your place in the social pecking order. And it’s worse for stay-at-home mom Katie Otto (Katy Mixon), who’s moved up into a pretentious leafy suburb filled with snooty, posh neighbours in family sitcom American Housewife.

Katie is competitive. If the other school moms are wearing Louboutins, she has to. If they’re hosting a fundraiser, she has to, too. She’s even cheering her leap from “third-fattest mom in Westport” to “second-fattest” when a rival moves out.

The Ottos are your typical family – there’s aloof dad Greg (Diedrich Bader), sweet eldest daughter Taylor (Meg Donnelly), middle child Oliver (Daniel DiMaggio) and oddball Anna-Kat (Julia Butters). But there’s nothing typical about their lives, often playing for cheap laughs.

Katy was pregnant while filming and says that it was the perfect role at the perfect time: “It’s such an interesting situation, with mommies who have been mommies for years and all of a sudden are going back to work. It’s a huge thing right now and you can see Katie itching for it.”

While it hasn’t won awards, the show has won praise and critical acclaim, like this Variety.com review: “Katie, a constantly wisecracking stay-at-home mom, embodies a kind of raw enthusiasm for life that is at odds with the other housewives – who are, in her mind, yoga-pants-clad, Fitbit-wearing, green-juice-toting skinny bitches.”