Alex, the protagonist of the HBO half-hour series “Youth,” is in many ways a typical rom-com heroine. She has a glamorous job (book agent) in a glamorous city (London), with an enviable apartment to match. She has a messy love life; attracting suitors isn’t a problem, but choosing wisely between them is.
She’s prone to the kind of miscommunication and messy decisionmaking that make you shout things like “JUST TALK TO HIM!” at your television, even as they generate the story required to fill out an eight-episode season. The difference is that Alex, the latest creation of actor and writer Sharon Horgan, is freshly 50 — decidedly not the age of your average rom-com lead. This makes the title of “Youth” somewhat ironic, like the inverse of FX’s “Adults”: those kids are nowhere near maturity, while Alex’s prefrontal cortex is long since developed.
But it’s also a nod to the second adolescence Alex finds herself experiencing. She’s many years divorced, and now her teenage son Rauri (Aran Murphy, babyfaced son of Cillian) is set to leave the house. The traditional guardrails of nuclear family life are off, leaving Alex with a canvas that’s thrillingly, terrifyingly blank.
And thanks to perimenopause, she’s as prone to hormonal mood swings as your average high schooler. In a note to press, Horgan positions “Youth” as the conclusion of a trilogy of sorts. Her breakout BBC series, “Pulling,” was a group portrait of chaotic 20somethings; “Catastrophe,” her four-season collaboration with American comedian Rob Delaney, was a dual love letter to early parenthood and long-term monogamy.
Between and since these calling cards, Horgan has remained impressively prolific, both behind the camera (the Sarah Jessica Parker vehicle “Divorce,” which she created) and in front (the crime dramedy “Bad Sisters,” in which she played one of the title characters on top of her writing duties). But “Pulling,” “Catastrophe” and “Youth” map the most closely onto Horgan’s own biography, a quality she deems “auto-fiction-y.” There are smaller rhymes, too: the way Delaney’s character in “Catastrophe” kept Horgan’s contact saved as “Sharon London Sex,” Alex has her absentee father of an ex-husband in her phone under “Dick for Brains.” Compared to post-collegiate self-seeking or even childrearing, one’s sixth decade is a much less mythologized phase of life. After all, it’s not as unified, or unifying, an experience: the longer paths stretch out, the more chances for them to diverge. (We’re all headed to the same place in the end, but people end up in all sorts of different places at the halfway mark.) This open space presents an opportunity for Horgan, and also explains the loose and light feel of “Youth.” Horgan remains a magnetic screen presence and a sharp comic writer, making Alex’s flailing ever enjoyable despite her aimlessness.
Just because Alex has an empty nest doesn’t mean she’s entirely free from obligation. She’s squarely in the middle of a generational sandwich, with aging parents on one side and Ruari on the other. (A personal crisis at university quickly proves that just because her son is a legal adult doesn’t mean Alex is done looking after him.) But these tough realities don’t drive the narrative of “Youth,” nor do they harsh its vibe. They’re simply the context that frames Alex’s book festival hookups and jaunts to Ibiza.
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