{"id":776992,"date":"2026-09-20T17:16:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-20T17:16:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/776992\/"},"modified":"2026-09-20T17:16:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-20T17:16:10","slug":"youth-review-sharon-horgan-hbo-comedy-takes-on-middle-age","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/776992\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Youth’ Review: Sharon Horgan HBO Comedy Takes on Middle Age"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tAlex, the protagonist of the HBO half-hour series \u201cYouth<\/a>,\u201d is in many ways a typical rom-com heroine. She has a glamorous job (book agent) in a glamorous city (London), with an enviable apartment to match. She has a messy love life; attracting suitors isn\u2019t a problem, but choosing wisely between them is. She\u2019s prone to the kind of miscommunication and messy decisionmaking that make you shout things like \u201cJUST TALK TO HIM!\u201d at your television, even as they generate the story required to fill out an eight-episode season.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe difference is that Alex, the latest creation of actor and writer Sharon Horgan<\/a>, is freshly 50 \u2014 decidedly not the age of your average rom-com lead. This makes the title of \u201cYouth\u201d somewhat ironic, like the inverse of FX\u2019s \u201cAdults\u201d: those kids are nowhere near maturity, while Alex\u2019s prefrontal cortex is long since developed. But it\u2019s also a nod to the second adolescence Alex finds herself experiencing. She\u2019s many years divorced, and now her teenage son Rauri (Aran Murphy, babyfaced son of Cillian) is set to leave the house. The traditional guardrails of nuclear family life are off, leaving Alex with a canvas that\u2019s thrillingly, terrifyingly blank. And thanks to perimenopause, she\u2019s as prone to hormonal mood swings as your average high schooler.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a note to press, Horgan positions \u201cYouth\u201d as the conclusion of a trilogy of sorts. Her breakout BBC series, \u201cPulling,\u201d was a group portrait of chaotic 20somethings; \u201cCatastrophe,\u201d her four-season collaboration with American comedian Rob Delaney, was a dual love letter to early parenthood and long-term monogamy. Between and since these calling cards, Horgan has remained impressively prolific, both behind the camera (the Sarah Jessica Parker vehicle \u201cDivorce,\u201d which she created) and in front (the crime dramedy \u201cBad Sisters,\u201d in which she played one of the title characters on top of her writing duties). But \u201cPulling,\u201d \u201cCatastrophe\u201d and \u201cYouth\u201d map the most closely onto Horgan\u2019s own biography, a quality she deems \u201cauto-fiction-y.\u201d There are smaller rhymes, too: the way Delaney\u2019s character in \u201cCatastrophe\u201d kept Horgan\u2019s contact saved as \u201cSharon London Sex,\u201d Alex has her absentee father of an ex-husband in her phone under \u201cDick for Brains.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCompared to post-collegiate self-seeking or even childrearing, one\u2019s sixth decade is a much less mythologized phase of life. After all, it\u2019s not as unified, or unifying, an experience: the longer paths stretch out, the more chances for them to diverge. (We\u2019re all headed to the same place in the end, but people end up in all sorts of different places at the halfway mark.) This open space presents an opportunity for Horgan, and also explains the loose and light feel of \u201cYouth.\u201d Horgan remains a magnetic screen presence and a sharp comic writer, making Alex\u2019s flailing ever enjoyable despite her aimlessness. \u201cYouth\u201d is still \u2014 and by design \u2014 less of a broad parable and more a specific story of one woman straining to make sense of a confusing crossroads.<\/p>\n

\n\tJust because Alex has an empty nest doesn\u2019t mean she\u2019s entirely free from obligation. She\u2019s squarely in the middle of a generational sandwich, with aging parents on one side and Ruari on the other. (A personal crisis at university quickly proves that just because her son is a legal adult doesn\u2019t mean Alex is done looking after him.) But these tough realities don\u2019t drive the narrative of \u201cYouth,\u201d nor do they harsh its vibe. They\u2019re simply the context that frames Alex\u2019s book festival hookups and jaunts to Ibiza. It\u2019s as if Horgan is arguing the inevitable consequences of aging aren\u2019t mutually exclusive with aspiration or \u2014 better for the comedy \u2014 botched experimentation.<\/p>\n

\n\tSome of the biggest laughs in \u201cYouth\u201d come from its gentle spoof of the publishing industry. (Shades of the similarly named \u201cYounger\u201d!) Working with her friend and employer Sam (Sharlene Whyte), a boundary-free partnership that zags between deal points and Sam\u2019s marital woes, Alex wrangles author egos and fends off competitors. Damian Lewis makes a cameo as himself, or at least a version who\u2019s dead set on writing a treatise on dog meat; Harriet Walter plays the long-suffering daughter of a romance author determined to get her mother\u2019s smut some prestige. The self-published novel \u201cGoblin Seed\u201d is a perfect parody of the romantasy trend; a reading by the insufferable author had me in hysterics.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut Alex\u2019s chief preoccupation, and the battleground on which she confronts her insecurities, is sex and dating. Her primary love interest, Pat (Rupert Friend), is an \u201cinstitutionally single\u201d old flame with a much younger girlfriend, though Alex dabbles in an age gap of her own when Sam sets her up with an older acquaintance. (Alex may get arthritis-induced lockjaw, but she\u2019s still quick to judge others\u2019 neck wrinkles.) Between more serious suitors, Alex dabbles in \u201clightly degrading\u201d one-night stands with continental himbos. These relationships are how Alex sharpens her self-image: old enough to look down on age-inappropriate arm candy, young enough to have an active, discriminating libido. She\u2019s capable of ageism in both directions.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe stakes of \u201cYouth\u201d aren\u2019t life-altering stuff. Alex can get distracted at work or have friction with Sam, but she\u2019s clearly good at her job; Pat is a cute, crush-worthy writer, but Alex is too jaded and experienced to be looking for her one true love. The character\u2019s goal is more modest, if no less interesting: She\u2019s trying to find a route through a wilderness with no road map. It\u2019s a little scary, but fun, too \u2014 for Alex, and for us.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe first two episodes of \u201cYouth\u201d will premiere on HBO and HBO Max on Sep. 20 at 10pm ET, with remaining episodes airing weekly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alex, the protagonist of the HBO half-hour series \u201cYouth,\u201d is in many ways a typical rom-com heroine. She…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":776993,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[96,256128,391,56,54,55,570],"class_list":["post-776992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-sharon-horgan","tag-tv","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-youth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=776992"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776992\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/776993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=776992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=776992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=776992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}