Youth on HBO: Sharon Horgan’s comedy about middle age is bracing, awkward and hilarious

Say the word “youth” and you know what pops into your mind – youth is wasted on the young, youth springs eternal, youth has no age, and so on and so on and so on.

Because youth is an obsession, something you never really stop thinking about the moment you realise you’re no longer part of it.

The inevitability and practicalities of ageing is ever present, and often a tragedy. When you emotionally feel 32 (as Leonardo DiCaprio does), but your body reminds you every morning that you’re not, it’s the worst kind of cognitive dissonance.

Still, there’s no stopping it – no matter what those weirdos on social media selling quack supplements insist.

After hilariously depicting previous life phases – your loose 20s and early 30s in Pulling, the encroaching responsibilities of your late 30s and 40s in Catastrophe - Irish writer and actor Sharon Horgan has a new series looking at the next stage: your 50s.

The excellent HBO comedy is ironically titled Youth, with Horgan in the role of a 50-something, London-based woman named Alex, who’s maybe menopausal, many years divorced and finally ready to properly date now that her kid is about to leave home, while juggling a career in publishing and the demands of her ailing parents.

Alex is part of the sandwich generation, being pushed in on all sides at a time when social media memes and ra-ra lifestyle mags tell you should be coming into your own power – “give less of a f—k what other people think, you’ll be more confident than ever!”.

If only you actually had some space and energy to embrace that so-called new freedom.

It’s a very particular moment in life because you get that first taste of the positive possibilities of what your 50s are supposed to entail – no more teenagers in the house, financial stability from three decades of work – only for new challenges to fill the gaps.

For Alex, her mum has had two toes amputated thanks to diabetes, her father is sliding into dementia and calls at the worst possible moments because he can’t work out how to turn off a podcast.

Her son Ruari (Aran Murphy) is supposed to be leaving for the University of Kent, but has boomeranged back quick smart and won’t tell her why, while her actor ex-husband is smugly coupled off and about to take off to Canada to shoot a space opera for six months.

She works for her friend Sam (Sharlene White) as a book agent, and is fighting to represent someone her boss-mate thinks is uncommercial while a former client she fired for being a creep is now top of the charts with a successful goblin porn romantasy tome.

Sam has set her up on a blind date with a nice man, but Alex is appalled to discover he’s in his 60s. She’s not there yet, right? Right?! She wants to still be in the league of dishy Patrick (Rupert Friend), who’s 47.

On top of that, Alex has just dropped the burger she was about to bite into on her way home from a messy night out – and any thoughts of picking it back up has been foiled by the judgmental look from a fellow bus passenger.

It’s a lot but Horgan, who also stars in the series as she has in the past with Pulling, Catastrophe and Bad Sisters, masterfully weaves together all the frustrations, absurdities, small triumphs and pathos of Alex’s story.

There’s a familiarity to Youth which recalls the awkward comedy and bracing scenarios of Horgan’s previous work, especially Catastrophe, the 2015 four-season series she co-created with Rob Delaney.

Alex could be Catastrophe’s onscreen Sharon, but with a different backstory. That’s far from a slight because that previous show was one of the shining jewels of 21st century TV (and always, always good for a rewatch, just FYI), and anything that even comes close speaks to the honesty of the storytelling.

Horgan, who has mimed her own life for her projects in the past, writes the show with a specificity that is also universally relatable that it has to come from someone’s lived experience. Lena Heady, 52, the Game of Thrones actor who once worked with Horgan on the 2005 rom-com Imagine Me & You, is credited as a co-writer on one instalment.

Horgan in real life has two daughters, and Alex has a son, and faces the unique challenges of trying to raise a man in 2026, and it’s not always easy. She tries to be present, but can’t see everything, such as the sperm-maxxing influencers he found himself following on social media.

The writing is insightful, and that goes for even if you’re not 50-something because the one thing anyone post-30 can resonate with is that you always feel younger than you are.

There’s a frantic-ness to the show because Alex’s life is a circus, but for the audience, Youth is never overwhelming. It’s controlled chaos, about a time in life that is anything but.

Youth is streaming on HBO Max with new episodes weekly