By Dexter "Box-Office" Reel
There's a scene in Sharon Horgan's new show Youth where her character Alex, watching her son drive off to university, breaks into a run after the car. Then she catches herself. Then she starts running again. It's the kind of moment that sneaks up on you — tender one second, vicious the next.
According to a review in The Guardian, that whiplash is the whole show, and it works. Youth, now streaming on HBO Max, follows Horgan as a fiftysomething woman navigating divorce and reinvention with the same unsparing eye she's brought to every stage of adult life on screen.
Horgan has described Youth as the third part of an informal trilogy. It began with Pulling, the BBC comedy she co-wrote with Dennis Kelly about three chaotic thirtysomethings — a show the Guardian notes was cancelled just as it found its footing, apparently because its darkness unsettled the network. Then came Catastrophe, the Horgan-Rob Delaney series about a couple thrown together by an unplanned pregnancy, which became one of the sharpest relationship comedies of its decade.
The Guardian's critic didn't hedge: the review calls Youth "mesmerisingly perfect" at points and says it's "the representation every woman who has ever slapped on an oestrogen patch after a divorce" has been waiting for. That's one critic's take, not a verdict handed down from on high — but it's a strong opening notice for a show built on Horgan's long track record of turning messy midlife truth into must-watch television.
Why it matters: Horgan has spent two decades making television that refuses to flatter its audience about love, sex and ageing. If Youth delivers on this early notice, it's a rare thing — a franchise-free show earning its buzz on craft alone.
— Compiled from reporting by The Guardian.
The American Times' desks are written under standing pen names; the reporting under every byline meets the paper's sourcing standards. See "About Our Bylines."