Review: ‘SMILF’ Tallies the Costs of Motherhood

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Children are blessings who bring joy and meaning to parents’ lives. However.

That “however” — the back-wrenching, stressful sweat equity of child care — has been productive material lately for TV comedies. “Louie,” now on hiatus, often focused on the labor of single fatherhood. In “Catastrophe,” parenthood is an upheaval. The fantastic second season of “Better Things,” airing now, depicts a single mom’s tough love for her daughters as a kind of febrile guerrilla war.

Each series involves parents who, whatever their problems, have a certain level of material security. “SMILF,” beginning Sunday on Showtime, offers another angle: Kids are damn expensive, especially when you’re barely getting by to begin with.

The creator-writer-star, Frankie Shaw, who based the series on her Sundance prizewinning short film, plays Bridgette Bird, a working-class single mom in Boston with dreams of playing in the WNBA and a toddler son named Larry, for the Celtics star. (The risqué acronym “SMILF” refers to single mothers; let’s say it stands for “Salacious Monogram I’m Loath to Flesh out.”)

[Frankie Shaw is the showrunner and star of “SMILF.”]

Single motherhood is a challenge here, in various ways; the first episode is a sex farce about the physical aftermath of childbirth and the carnal inconvenience of being shadowed by a tiny wingman. But the spirited Bridgette at least has a support system. Her mother, Tutu (Rosie O’Donnell), is readily available, if a little distracted and demanding; Rafi (Miguel Gomez), her ex and Larry’s father, does some co-parenting, though they differ on some issues, like religion and immunizations.

Still, there’s only so much cash in Bridgette’s occasional acting spots and her part-time job tutoring the feckless children of Ally (Connie Britton), a warm but self-centered rich woman. (In one episode, she considers desperation gigs including making balloon-popping fetish videos.) “SMILF” is smart about how much children cost, in money and time — a trip to the store can become a fraught negotiation; an unexpected illness can set off a logistical chain reaction.

Like some past Showtime comedies (“Happyish,” “Nurse Jackie”), “SMILF” has an unsteady tone, swerving from emotional realism to quirkiness to slapstick raunch to abrupt fantasy sequences, in roughly descending order of what works best. There’s a riffing, open-mic quality to the first three episodes, as if the show were still trying on personalities.

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