Sharon Horgan’s sharp new comedy-drama “Youth” (HBO Max) “perfectly captures what it is to reach your 50s and find that it’s no walk in the park”, said Anita Singh in The Telegraph.
Horgan plays Alex, a member of “the sandwich generation”, caught between the demands of being a parent and looking after her own ageing parents. She has a job as a literary agent, “where the lows include Damian Lewis (playing himself, perfectly deadpan) coming into the office and solemnly announcing that he has written a social satire called ‘Dog Meat’”. She is also divorced and tentatively stepping back into the dating scene, now that her son Ruarí (Aran Murphy) is leaving for university.
If you’re in the market for comedies about women in their 50s, this one “rings hilariously, despairingly true”.
“Thank God for Sharon Horgan,” said Rhik Samadder in The Guardian, “chronicler of all our journeys.” The sex scenes here are “hilarious and penetratingly insightful”, while the show’s depictions of the “uninspiring, Sisyphean grind of caregiving” are good enough to carry the series alone. Murphy (son of Cillian), meanwhile, delivers a “beautifully unforced” performance as Ruarí.
Horgan has become “TV royalty”, said Nick Hilton in The Independent, with a “quartet of fine shows” – “Divorce”, “Motherland”, “Catastrophe” and “Bad Sisters” – to her name. She remains “charming company” on screen, but “Youth” is missing the “pathos” of “Catastrophe” and “the nastiness” of “Motherland”. Hogan’s writing is “as warm and human as ever”, but it lacks her trademark “spark”.
Show about women in their 50s ‘rings hilariously, despairingly true’
