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Sharon Horgan's 'Youth' Premieres on HBO Max
Confirmed
In Short: The new HBO series explores the life of a 50-year-old divorcee navigating midlife.
Sharon Horgan, known for her roles in 'Pulling' and 'Catastrophe,' stars in and creates 'Youth,' a new HBO series that delves into the life of a 50-year-old divorcee named Alex.
In 'Youth,' Alex, played by Horgan, is a literary agent who is trying to find new meaning in life after her son moves out to university.
The series, which premiered on HBO Max, reflects Horgan's signature style of portraying characters who are both relatable and flawed, as they navigate the complexities of midlife.
Horgan's character Alex is portrayed as someone who is still figuring things out, despite her age and accomplishments.
Youth' is a perceptive and often hilarious exploration of a subject rarely seen in popular media—a middle-aged woman grappling with the passage of time and the desire to savor what little youth she has left.
What's confirmed
- 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.
- Darren Star shows are all about aspiration; Horgan’s are at worst a warning, but at best a reflection of how we truly are.
- Sharon Horgan has made her name playing a specific type of character: an understandable, charming misanthrope-adjacent who desperately wants to be happy.
- 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.
- 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.
- It’s more accurate to say that I’m on the verge of calling the police on Sharon Horgan because clearly she has been illegally spying on me for the past two years (at least) and is now broadcasting the details of my existence on HBO and HBO Max.
What's still developing
- When we meet Horgan’s characters, the fun times are fading away as a glut of responsibilities take their place.
- The above sentiment stems from Alex, Sharon Horgan’s fifty-something publishing associate and single mom in her new HBO series “Youth,” but it’s easy to imagine the same question originating from many of the characters the writer and actor has embodied over the years.
- “Catastrophe” is uproariously funny in its time-hopping portrait of a surprise couple’s surprising hardships.
- Through seven of the first season’s eight episodes, “ Youth ” lands somewhere in between “Divorce’s” challenging black comedy and “Catastrophe’s” defiant jubilation — which is appropriate, given Alex is in the midst of a midlife crisis brought on by a destabilizing bait and switch.
- Seen one way, the title of HBO ’s new Youth is clearly ironic.
- Its protagonist, Alex (creator Sharon Horgan ), is not some bright-eyed 20something making her way in the big city, but a 50something divorcée; her driving concern is not what to do with a future that stretches endlessly before her, but how to make the most of one she fears is rapidly closing shut.
- Horgan, whose Catastrophe charted the ups and downs of a relationship with painful, hilarious honesty, applies the same frankness to the minor indignities of midlife.
- Horgan is the kind of showrunner/writer/actress who centers her comedy on taking the piss out of herself.