Sharon Horgan’s five-star comedy is for every woman stuck in the ‘sandwich generation’

If you’re a fan of Sharon Horgan (who isn’t?), as both writer and actor, you’ll almost certainly love her new comedy-drama. Something of a spiritual successor to her 2006 series Pulling , which followed the dating lives of women in their 30s, and the brilliant Catastrophe , about a marriage kick-started by an accidental pregnancy after a wild week-long fling, Youth sees Horgan exploring the specifics of middle-aged womanhood. But if that sounds too earnest, be assured that it’s very, often darkly, funny.

Horgan is Alex, a recently divorced 50-year-old who is the embodiment of the “sandwich generation” , the term for those (almost always women) juggling caring for ageing parents, teenaged or young adult kids , holding down a career and the onset of invisibility and waning sex appeal.

The series is deeply informed by her own life: Horgan, recently divorced herself, describes it as “auto-fictiony”. She recently told Vanity Fair that she wanted to look “through the lens of a divorced woman who has a very specific amount of time left to find happiness,” while feeling like there’s a “big alarm bell going off”.

The first episode opens as a solemn voiceover over a montage of influential older women – Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Gloria Steinem, Margaret Atwood – intones about ageing, telling us that “no decade moves faster than 50-60. You need to make every single second of your time count”, before cutting to Alex laughing at a TikTok video of a parrot having a haircut and blow-dry. Phew.

Her scrolling is interrupted by a text from her boss/best friend Sam (Sharlene Whyte) asking where she is. Alex is a literary agent, and working for her friend is just one of many frustrations.

She’s excited though, that her rebellious teenage son Ruari (Aran Murphy, son of Cillian), is about to head off to university, even if he has started dabbling in videos from manosphere influencers. Ruari’s self-absorbed dad Lorcan (Owen McDonnell), isn’t exactly the greatest role model – he’s a jobbing actor about to move to Canada with his younger girlfriend for a role in a B-grade sci-fi series, leaving Alex to deal with Ruari as he grapples with young manhood.

Then there are her parents: her mum has diabetes and her dad is showing signs of dementia (“mild-ish Alzheimer’s, like Joe Biden second term-level”). These are problems she’s trying to share with her younger sister, who is busy with a newborn baby.

At once thrilled and terrified at her newly emptied nest, Alex is also anxious about her age, studying older women on the bus, constantly buying new fitness equipment, worried she’ll never have a relationship again. She has an ongoing casual hook-up with Patrick (Rupert Friend), but he is definitely not the settling-down type, although Alex keeps going back there.

Sam insists he’s entirely wrong for her, and sets her up on a blind date. But when the date, Michael (Tim McInnerny), reveals he’s 67, he might as well have said 97 by the look on Alex’s face. When Sam texts her to ask how it’s going, Alex’s response is, “he’s old as f--- is how it’s going.