Youth: Season One Review

Some parts of HBO’s latest original series, Youth, feel like they’re shooting for relatability and sincerity. There’s a 50-odd-year-old woman, a divorcee, hitting a new stage of life, potentially looking to settle down and find a new man, juggle her job, and deal with her son. And there’s another part: she works as a literary agent, which is hard to relate to in equal parts, and she has someone spending so much time not working, and, equally, I wonder if a younger audience watching this understands what a book even is.

For the first part of my query, I do think HBO has a high success rate with series where the lead is relatable to many while never really working a 9-5; look at Sex and the City. And although this series isn’t quite as raunchy as that was in its time, Youth is at least offering a look at love, life, and sex as an older lady while still keeping it fun.

There are some classic bits in here as Alex (Sharon Horgan) deals with aging parents, including a mother who has just lost a toe to diabetes, a dropout son, Ruarí (Aran Murphy), who is on TikTok all the time and seemingly lost in what to do in life, and an ex-partner who now has a younger girlfriend and isn’t doing any part of his role as a father. In Alex’s professional life, boundaries are crossed with handsy agents in the same world; regrets are had over a fired author whose latest book is obviously trash, yet is taking the world by storm, and she rides a thin line at times with boss Sam (Sharlene Whyte), who is basically also her best friend, but keeps Alex’s decisions on a short leash.

Alex’s love life involves getting caught up in the non-committal but otherwise great guy world of Patrick (Rupert Friend) and also trying out a somewhat older-but-can’t-decide-if-too-old world of a man “closer to her age.” To which she has to inquire about the sag of his balls on the first date. Quality banter!

There’s just enough to drag you from one episode to the next with the thirty-minute episodes of Youth. There’s some romance drama, a tease of something going on with Ruari, or a blow-up at a convention. That’s enough for a basis, but I never felt like Alex was a fully formed character. She’s almost written around the moments or drama in her life. I don’t know whether she has a passion for this literary work or just fell into it; I’m not sure whether she actually wants to find love, settle down, or just a best friend who also has sex sometimes. Right up until the last couple of episodes, Alex was just a bit of a confusing enigma. Still, I also think her confounding ability to act thirty at fifty is meant to show that no one really ever has it all sorted out and all the answers, but the show sometimes doesn’t deliver on its own premise. It often feels like the character should be in their thirties or forties, and the fifties part is just thrown out there for some gags about arthritis.

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