Sharon Horgan has made her name playing a specific type of character: an understandable, charming misanthrope-adjacent who desperately wants to be happy. Through her roles on various shows and movies – most notably on the self-created Pulling and Catastrophe, as well as Bad Sisters and others, Horgan makes herself reprehensible and relatable at the same time. You understand her, even as you hate what she’s doing; and perhaps worst of all, even see yourself in her actions.
Despite her age (she’s a ripe old 56 as of this writing), that won’t slow down any time soon with HBO’s superlative Youth, an eight episode series (seven episodes were provided to critics for review) that serves as a spiritual sequel to Pulling and Catastrophe. Where the former dealt with marriage (sort of) and the second with parenthood (definitely), Youth is about life after that, or at least in the fallout of the other major tentpoles… What are you when you’ve already done the things society wants you to do – get married, have kids, have a successful job and friends – and yet are somehow still A) alive, and B) unfulfilled?
In the series, Horgan plays Alex (good name), a book agent and divorcée who is finally getting to live the life she wants when her son Ruari (Aran Murphy) moves out to university. She doesn’t even waste an hour clearing out his room and putting in a yoga mat, ready to lean into the single lifestyle she’s clearly been dreaming of for years. The only problem is, Ruari almost immediately moves back in for unknown reasons, leading to a stilted coming of age story for both of them.
While there are other characters orbiting the series that all feed off the main theme, the core of the show is the dual journeys between Alex and Ruari, both of whom can in certain aspects barely function in society. Alex has the age and plenty of sharp wit, but give her an inch of rope and she’ll hang herself, from considering eating a late night burger she dropped on the floor of a bus to accidentally double booking a date to lying to her boss and beyond.
Ruari, meanwhile, is not necessarily the old beyond his years counterpoint you might expect… In fact, he’s a teen boy who sort of totally sucks, spending his time watching TikTok content about storing your sperm in your balls to build up man strength to getting wasted in a graveyard with a random bird-keeper. Both are broken in their own ways, and though there are slow steps towards maturity over the course of the season, true to form for a Horgan show this isn’t about miraculous changes; it’s baby steps.
In that, what Youth digs into so well is the lie that with age comes wisdom… Growing up – and I do mean from birth to death – rarely do you feel like you’re older. There’s no “maturity” switch that goes off at any point where you suddenly realize, “ah, yes, now I am a responsible adult.” Throughout life, we feel that we are ourselves, and that’s pretty much it. And sometimes that means not so much arrested development as it does continuing as we always were.
Did I mention the show is very funny? It is! In fact, everything I’ve indicated above about deep explorations of the psyche and the process of aging are baked into the back-end of the show, not the front. This is a comedy, first and foremost, and beyond Horgan being a gifted comedian, you’ve got a great supporting cast around her. Rupert Friend is an old flame of Alex’s named Patrick who we’re told is a typical non-committing man-child, but frankly seems to be the most put-together character on the show. Friend is ridiculously charming, and matches Horgan beat for beat; you can understand why she’d be so drawn to him despite the warnings of her friends. Speaking of friends, Sharlene Whyte is fascinating to watch as Alex’s boss/bestie Sam, able to turn on a dime from dishing and gossiping to sharply taking Alex down a peg.
And the supporting cast is a delight, too, including Anne Reid as an over-sexed octogenarian author, Harriet Walter as her deadly serious daughter, and Freddie Fox as an effete rival agent. Douglas Hodge gets the most to do, though, playing an absolutely disgusting author who was ditched by Alex, and is now taking the literary world by storm with his awful but best-selling romantasy novel Goblin Seed. Hodge excels at playing the sort of character who makes you feel like you need to take a shower after watching him, and that continues here.
Look, it’s highly likely that with this series hitting HBO it’ll draw comparisons to another series about older women trying to figure out their lives and loves, aka …And Just Like That. But nothing against the Sex and the City sequel, Youth has a lot more on its mind and a defter touch at weaving those ideas through a tightly scripted, episodic, comedic narrative. It’s also much better equipped to be understandable to the common viewer. Darren Star shows are all about aspiration; Horgan’s are at worst a warning, but at best a reflection of how we truly are. Given HBO didn’t send out the finale for review, it’s tough to judge how this will all turn out in the end. But hey: that’s life.
Youth premieres Sunday, September 20 at 10pm ET on HBO and HBO Max.
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