Riding the recent trend — five out of six actress Emmy awards just went to women over 50 — Sharon Horgan plays a divorced London literary agent coping with having turned the big five-oh in HBO Max’s ironically titled “Youth.” At an age when women were once crocheting tea cozies and watching the grandkids, Alex (Horgan) has yet to achieve the contemporary wisdom of not having any fucks to give, but still wants to be f—ckable, relevant and “seen” in all her klutzy, leggy glory.
Horgan is the kind of showrunner/writer/actress who centers her comedy on taking the piss out of herself. Following funny yet varied hits “Bad Sisters,” “Catastrophe” and “Pulling,” the Irish entertainer, at the ripe old age of 56, plumbs the humorous hellscape of a working divorced single mother. Alex is constantly reevaluating her sell-by date like a shopper among the yogurts at the grocery store.
Hers is a life of being pulled in multiple directions at once, which might be called multi-tasking if she wasn’t so at sixes and sevens all the time. At work, the horny lit agent is trying to sign clients, sell books to publishers and, if possible, get laid at prime opportunities like the Frankfurt Book Fair, a place rife with cheating spouses and adjacent hotel rooms on the company dollar. A scene in a co-ed sauna in which a towel-clutching Alex is surrounded by nude bodies and men’s nobs definitely exploits the fish-out-of-water jokes for maximum impact.
On the family front, her character’s also the egg salad in the sandwich generation. She’s at that tipping point, often depicted in car commercials and ads for dorm décor, where she is launching her son Ruari (Aran Murphy) to university. If the charming but gawky actor looks familiar it’s because he’s the real-life son of Oscar-winning “Oppenheimer” star Cillian Murphy. Alex isn’t the first mum who’s wept dispatching junior to college and, one hopes, onto the conveyor belt of adulthood so that she can return to being an adult herself. Fat chance.
Other family challenges include her ailing, increasingly stubborn and wobbly parents. Then there’s her flaky ex (Owen McDonnell), a raging peroxide-blonde narcissist. A supercilious actor of a middle to lower tier, he has trotted off to Toronto for an American TV series, a space opera, with his considerably younger and more nubile new partner. Just the sight of the newer model pisses Alex off.
In a generous twist, Horgan has also written a tasty morsel of a love interest, Patrick (the delicious Rupert Friend). He’s an easy-going charmer but a bit untethered. At 47 and never married, there may be a chip missing. Can he commit? Can she? They are a pair saddled with bad timing despite an abundance of chemistry. It’s also as if Alex is suspicious of anybody who chooses to love her in the wake of her own marital debacle.
Alex is, in a word, relatable. An absolute mess.
Most of this sandwich generation material is a staple of contemporary sitcoms, but Horgan sets herself apart because she’s willing to slay some sacred cows over the eight half-hour episodes. Her take on the fallacy of the empty nest is fresh, even if the situation is as old as that 1970s classic “All in the Family,” may Rob Reiner rest in peace. And yet Horgan dives into the uncomfortable possibilities: the mutual shame and sense of failure shared by mother and son when, after all the striving to get the lad through graduation and into college, he returns a week later, canceled and sexually confused.
Horgan also writes female raunchy outrageously. This is not your mother’s menopause. She’s outspoken that a middle-aged woman is still capable of having sex and hungers for it, even as she worries that her body may never be beach-ready again.
The widening gap between who Alex is now, and who she’s allowed to be in the world, is exploited for laughs. Youth may be wasted on the young, but persistence, resilience and a sense of humor can be among the merits of maturity if done right.
Following in the footsteps of all those Emmy winners, Horgan’s success is another sign of the rise of varied female characters who redefine the roles of mother, daughter, wife and worker, to claim a larger identity. I’ll dub the trend the menopaussance.
“Youth” premieres Sunday on HBO and HBO Max.
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