They say you should write about what you know, and Sharon Horgan knows ageing.
Previous series Pulling vaguely dealt with life in your 30s, and Catastrophe, time in your 40s.
The sequence continues with Youth, which has launched on HBO Max.
Our protagonist Alex, a literary agent, has turned 50. It’s meant to be one of the best decades of your life.
You have the maturity to see life for what it is; your children have probably left home for work or college, you have more time and money and hopefully the good health and mobility to enjoy it.
Not for Alex. Her life is a ball of stress, panic and an occasional bit of fun.
She’s divorced and desperate for a relationship. Her career is struggling rather than reaching a crescendo, and her teenage son has dropped out of college because the female student body thinks he’s a pervert.
Additionally, her elderly parents need more help, and her ex-husband is off to Canada to star in a science-fiction TV series, leaving her to parent Ruari (Aran Murphy) alone.
She is desperate for a serious relationship because she believes her only chance of later-life love is a partner who’s gotten used to her while she still has some degree of youth on her side.
Alex (Sharon Horgan) and Ruari (Aran Murphy) in Youth. PICTURE COLIN HUTTON/HBO 
Sharlene Whyte and Sharon Horgan in Youth. PICTURE COLIN HUTTON/HBO (Colin Hutton)
“People need to fall in love with this me, before old me arrives,” she tells her boss and best friend. “I’ve only ten sexual years left.”
“No single decade moves faster than from 50 to 60,” Alex says mournfully, although, given her circumstances, it might be a blessing.
She’s barely moved into her sixth decade when she gets lockjaw out of the blue.
A young doctor shrugs and tells her, “It’s an age thing”. Arthritis is to be expected in her 50s, it seems, and the doctor warns her off oral sex for a while. Chance would be a fine thing, thinks Alex.
She’s shocked at how old her blind date is when he turns up in the restaurant. To be fair, he’s 67, and the sex doesn’t go well.
Then a younger ex-partner turns up at her door. “You messaged me,” he says. “You spelt horny wrong.”
That relationship goes wrong when she tells him that he’s “not a serious person.”
Meanwhile, Alex has to bring Ruari with her on a work trip to a literary conference in Frankfurt. He’s left school after freshers week following a drunken incident with a girl he liked.
While Alex is busy being humiliated about an author she dropped who went on to self-publish a hit romance fantasy novel with the spectacular title, Goblin Seed, Ruari finds a German fatherly confidant who likes smoking cannabis and drinking in a local graveyard.
Alex’s best asset, 92-year-old Charlotte Arbor (Anne Reid) is considering moving to another agent after Alex suggested her latest novel was too raunchy and needed a rewrite.
This didn’t go down well with Charlotte’s daughter, who demanded to know why her agent hadn’t worked hard enough to change her mum’s image to make her a “natural treasure.”
“What do you do for your 15%?” she asks pointedly, and Alex can barely find an answer, never mind a persuasive one.
The jokes are good, and there’s an occasional laugh-out-loud moment.
Three episodes are available to stream now, and the remaining five will be released weekly, on Mondays, from now to early November.
I’m not sure they are worth waiting for.