Mo season two is the best possible riposte to Donald Trump’s worldview
Mo season two is the best possible riposte to Donald Trump’s worldview
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Mo Amer’s provocative yet sweet comedy, about an asylum seeker in the US, holds a mirror up to 21st-century America while delivering belly laughs at a regular clip. When Palestinian-American comedian Mo Amer debuted his Netflix series, Mo, in August 2022, its semi-fictionalised depiction of an asylum seeker from the Middle East living in perpetual dread of US immigration officials (the infamous “ICE”) in Texas was undeniably newsworthy – but did not feel entirely ripped from the headlines.
![[Mo has to cope with an overbearing mother Yusra (Farah Bsieso)]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/01/28/14/MO_207_Unit_00366RC.jpg)
Three years on, all has changed – both in terms of the global profile of Palestine and of the treatment of migrants in Donald Trump’s America. Mo’s second and final season was filmed before Trump recaptured the White House and immediately declared war on the undocumented. Yet the series intersects chillingly with the Maga movement’s nightmarish new normal and the unleashing of a wave of ICE raids that have left migrants in a state of ever-deepening despair.
Immigrant trauma, the long shadow of conflict in the Middle East… clearly these are not the typical raw materials of a charming sitcom. But what’s most impressive about Amer’s provocative yet sweet comedy is that it holds a mirror up to 21st-century America while delivering belly laughs at a regular clip. Making full use of the lead’s teddy bear persona, this immensely likeable chuckle-fest proves humour can bring warmth and empathy to even the bleakest scenarios.
Amer – whose family fled Kuwait during the Gulf war to resettle in Texas – has serious points to get across about the plight of immigrants threatened with immediate deportation in America. He also touches on the experiences of the Palestine diaspora in the US: their frustration at watching from afar the suffering of their homeland. However, it does so with huge generosity of spirit amplified by Amer’s agreeably befuddled central performance. If Mo is a reluctant outsider adrift in an increasingly hostile country, he is, above all, a confused everyman muddling through for all he is worth.
