General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Mammals

Mammals is a six-part British comedy-drama television series created by James Richardson and writer Jez Butterworth, starring James Corden as a Michelin-starred chef whose marriage unravels when he discovers secrets about his pregnant wife. It was released worldwide on Amazon Prime Video on 11 November 2022.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Format	Six-part comedy-drama, one series, episodes of roughly 26 to 30 minutes³^•⁴
Premiere	11 November 2022, all episodes on Prime Video; premiered at number 1 in the UK after a big-screen premiere at the BFI London Film Festival¹
Main cast	James Corden (Jamie Buckingham), Melia Kreiling (Amandine Buckingham), Colin Morgan (Jeff Wilson), Sally Hawkins (Lue), Henry Lloyd-Hughes (Jack), Samuel Anderson (Dan)³
Key crew	Written by Jez Butterworth; directed by Stephanie Laing; produced by Street Hassle with Vertigo Films and Fulwell 73 for Amazon Studios²^•³
Critical scores	66% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer from 29 reviews; a Metascore of 60 on Metacritic from 14 reviews⁵^•⁶
Filming locations	West London, Cornwall, Cambridge, and Monaco⁷

Spoilers

Premise

The series follows Jamie Buckingham (James Corden), a chef preparing to open his first solo restaurant, and his French wife Amandine (Melia Kreiling), who is expecting their first child. An idyllic holiday ends in a miscarriage, and while Amandine calls people with the news, Jamie discovers from her phone that she has been having an affair with a man called Paul. He enlists his brother-in-law Jeff (Colin Morgan) to help him hunt for answers, and the search widens the cracks in Jeff's own marriage to Jamie's sister Lue (Sally Hawkins).⁸^•⁴

The show frames itself as a question about fidelity: in a world of eight billion people, what happens after finding "the one," and can promises of monogamy be kept. Prime Video's description ties the title to that theme, asking whether humans, after all, are not just mammals.⁴ Corden explained the title in the same spirit, saying that human beings seem to have forgotten they are just a species, and that species get wiped out.⁹

Cast and characters

James Corden plays Jamie Buckingham, a confident up-and-coming chef about to open his first restaurant. Melia Kreiling plays his wife Amandine, whose motivations stay largely hidden until late in the series. Colin Morgan plays Jeff Wilson, a neuroscientist married to Jamie's sister Lue, played by Sally Hawkins; Lue escapes into daydreams about being Coco Chanel's assistant in 1920s Paris. Henry Lloyd-Hughes plays the billionaire Jack Elliot, and Samuel Anderson plays Dan, Amandine's violin teacher.³^•⁸^•⁷^•¹²

Production

Amazon announced the series on 13 July 2021 as a UK Amazon Original written by Jez Butterworth, a two-time Olivier and Tony Award-winning playwright known for Jerusalem, The Ferryman, and the screenplays for Spectre and Ford v Ferrari. Filming began that month. The series was produced by Street Hassle, operated by Butterworth, in association with Vertigo Films and Corden's Fulwell 73 for Amazon Studios, and launched in more than 240 countries and territories.²

Behind the camera. Stephanie Laing, whose earlier work includes Physical and Made for Love, directed all six episodes, with Georgina Lowe producing and Graham Coxon composing the music.¹^•¹⁰ Cinematography was by Mattias Nyburg, whose photography in the opening episode leans on lens flares and golden-hour coastal vistas.¹⁰^•¹¹ Filming took place in West London, Cornwall, Cambridge, and Monaco, and Sir Tom Jones appears as himself in a cameo in the first episode, shot on Millook beach near Bude in Cornwall.⁷

Reception

Aggregate scores. On Rotten Tomatoes the first season holds a 66% Tomatometer from 29 reviews and a 57% Popcornmeter score from more than 100 audience ratings. On Metacritic it has a Metascore of 60, labeled mixed or average, based on 14 critic reviews, of which 5 were positive, 9 mixed, and none negative.⁵^•⁶

Critical response. Reviews divided over the show's surreal ambitions. Anita Singh of The Telegraph gave it 4 out of 5, calling it a quality comedy-drama that never loses an element of surprise and crediting Corden's performance with carrying it.⁶ Sophie Gilbert of The Atlantic called Corden's performance as Jamie superb, largely sympathetic with grace notes of weaseliness and spite.⁶ Guy Lodge, reviewing the first three episodes for Sight and Sound, described an easy, attractive diversion that is tonally wayward and oddly unreal, sharpened by the ruder impulses of Butterworth's writing and Corden's prickly performance.¹¹ Lucy Mangan of The Guardian was negative, judging that the script's philosophical and formal ambitions never work well enough to succeed on their own terms, though she praised the work of Hawkins, Kreiling, and Morgan.⁸ The Rotten Tomatoes critics consensus said the series gives Corden a surlier role he inhabits convincingly and is an intriguing enough study of monogamy, but proves too trying a commitment before getting to the point.¹³

Related uses of the title

The name Mammals also belongs to a separate 2024 BBC natural history series presented by David Attenborough, a six-part, six-by-60-minute production by the BBC Studios Natural History Unit co-produced by BBC America, ZDF, Youku, and France Télévisions, which premiered on BBC America on 13 July 2024. It is unrelated to the 2022 comedy-drama.¹⁴

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › Unscripted, reality, and web-native series › Web-native and streaming-original series › Comedy, drama, and general-genre web series › Premiered 2022 to 2026

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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