‘Youth’ HBO Max Review: Sharon Horgan Completes Her Trilogy Of Modern Women With A Funny, Honest Look At Life After 50

Over the course of her career, British comedian Sharon Horgan has made her name wearing two hats at once, as both creator and star of her own series. She has occasionally done one without the other, but the series most closely identified with her are the ones that place her on both sides of the camera. In that sense, Youth could easily pass for a sequel, or at least a continuation, of the saga that began with Pulling (2006-2009) and carried on through Catastrophe (2015-2019). The characters and their stories are different each time, yet the three women at the center share a common thread: each wrestles with the troubles, joys and misadventures of women her own age, problems that may not be literally autobiographical but certainly are in a spiritual sense.

And Youth, ironically (or maybe not so much), is about women over 50 and the particular pains and pleasures that come with that stage of life. Horgan plays Alex, a British literary agent who is divorced from a failed actor (Owen McDonnell), has a casual lover who wants no strings attached (Rupert Friend), and is about to send her son Ruari (Aran Murphy) off to university, a shift at home that finally leaves her free to think about new adventures. Things don’t quite go to plan, though: Ruari lasts about five minutes at «uni,» and her ex is off to work in Canada, offering no help whatsoever.

Amid all that chaos, Alex has to deal with a roster of rather insufferable writers, among them Malcolm (Douglas Hodge), who also happens to be another ex; the veteran Charlotte (Anne Reid); and Charlotte’s daughter and representative, Livonia (Harriet Walter). On top of that come new romantic prospects, professional rivals, and the trouble her peculiar son gets into, and drags her into. Her greatest ally is Sam (Sharlene Whyte), her boss, who is also her friend and the person with whom she shares everything that happens to her. And in episodes that run under half an hour each, plenty does happen to Alex.

At its core, the show is about a woman past 50 who believes she has little time left before she’s officially old, and before she has to start dating older men. She copes with physical limitations, with parents who have one foot in the grave, and with the effort of finding some pleasure at an age when the complications seem to outnumber the joys. Or at least that is how she feels at first, since part of what Youth sets out to do is prove that its title isn’t quite as ironic as it looks.

Horgan is razor-sharp in her ironic observations about her character’s life: the sex, her relationship with her own body, menopause, her fears, her unbearable ex, the men who orbit her, and so on. The series gives special weight to Alex’s relationship with her son, an eccentric kid who comes home rattled after a short and unhappy stint at university, and whom she has no idea how to handle. To my taste, he’s a somewhat basic creation, and the show gets better whenever he stops getting in the way or being a problem.

Youth mixes flashes of comic inspiration with a handful of moving dramatic scenes and, a couple of missteps aside, finds a genuine emotional truth about life after 50, one that rings both credible and honest. As her body stops responding the way it used to and life keeps throwing unexpected obstacles her way, Alex follows in the footsteps of Horgan’s earlier characters, doing her best to survive these new predicaments. Together, the three make up a trilogy that amounts to one long saga about the personal and professional lives of contemporary women.