Youth

We all love actor/writer Sharon Horgan, and she’s got a new show on HBO called Youth. Horgan stars as Alex, a 50-year-old divorcée who finds herself at several simultaneous personal and professional crossroads. But where does this new show fall in the Horgan canon? Is it essential, or is it more of a vestigial Horgan? Looking for more TV and movies about navigating mid-life? Check out these episodes: ‘The Invite’ is a marriage comedy with sex and heart https://www.npr.org/2026/07/13/nx-s1-5887485/the-invite-is-a-marriage-comedy-with-sex-and-heart A twisty scam goes haywire in the fun 'Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed' https://www.npr.org/2026/05/29/nx-s1-5837301/a-twisty-scam-goes-haywire-in-the-fun-maximum-pleasure-guaranteed In Tina Fey’s ‘The Four Seasons,’ marriage is far from a vacation https://www.npr.org/2026/05/28/nx-s1-5836363/in-tina-feys-the-four-seasons-marriage-is-far-from-a-vacation In ‘Rooster,’ Steve Carell makes some college admissions https://www.npr.org/2026/03/18/nx-s1-5750412/in-rooster-steve-carell-makes-some-college-admissions Connect with Pop Culture Happy Hour: Letterboxd https://letterboxd.com/nprpopculture/ / Facebook https://www.facebook.com/pchh Our weekly newsletter https://www.npr.org/newsletter/pop-culture Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org http://plus.npr.org/. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

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• 0:37Speaker 01

  Look, you love Sharon Horgan. We all love actor/writer Sharon Horgan, whether you know her from Catastrophe or Bad Sisters or somewhere else. Well, let the word go forth from this time and place. Sharon Horgan's got a new show on HBO. It's called Youth. She created it and stars in it as a 50-year-old woman who finds herself at several simultaneous personal and professional crossroads. But where does this new show fall in the Horgan canon? Is it essential, or is it a more vestigial Horgan? We're all just gonna give some of them to kind of sit in that, marinate in that for a second. Okay. I'm Glen Weldon, and joining me today on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour is Barry Hardiman. She's a senior editor for NPR's Investigations team. Hey, Barry.

• 1:19Speaker 02

  Hi.

• 1:19Speaker 01

  Hey. Also with us is Vulture TV critic Roxana Hadadi. Hey, Roxana.

• 1:24Speaker 03

  Hello.

• 1:25Speaker 01

  Hello. Let's get to it. In Youth, Sharon Horgan plays Alex, a 50-year-old literary agent in London. She's divorced, she's got a kid headed off to college. He's played by Aaron Murphy. And she's trying to negotiate work and motherhood and sex as they all change around her.

• 1:41Speaker 02

  I need someone to fall in love with me now, so there's a bit of time left with this me before old me is like, I'm here now.

• 1:49Speaker 01

  For sex, Alex looks to Patrick, who might be someone she could build a life with, or he might be a trifling himbo. He's played by Rupert Friend. Meanwhile, her son Rory is dealing with a whole world of stuff on his own. Eight episodes of Youth are airing on HBO and streaming on HBO Max. Barry, where are you? Are you a Horgan grinder? Where are you on this?

• 2:11Speaker 03

  Are there any more left in there for you?

• 2:13Speaker 01

  Just that's it. I regret nothing.

• 2:16Speaker 03

  Good. Well, I am very much, I love Sharon Horgan. I've so enjoyed both Catastrophe and Bad Sisters. And, you know, she's enormously charismatic and fun to watch and to listen to talk. And I loved this. The suspense was very, very fun to watch. I will say, I felt, as a personal affront, I turned 52 weeks ago, and this is not a spoiler to say that there is an introduction of several of Maya Angelou and Jane Goodall and like how important the decade 50 to 60 is. And I immediately, you know, felt like I was going to throw up and-

• 2:48Speaker 01

  Spoke to you.

• 2:49Speaker 03

  It spoke to me, but it also was very much like grabbing me by the lapels and/or by my lengthening earlobes and yelling at me. So it's very charming. You know, she is herself both stunning and charismatic and kind of messy. And, you know, if there is a problem for me with this show, which, again, like, I do find it to be sort of emotionally satisfying. She's very much in the sandwich generation. She's got parents that are aging and a son who is meant to be going to university and is having his own troubles. And, you know, she's trying to sort of find herself. And, you know, I think if we've learned anything from Miranda July and the last five years

• 3:30Speaker 03

  of the culture, it is that we are in a moment to talk about middle-aged women in this particular coming-of-age moment. You know, this is the sort of, are you there, God, it's me, Sharon Horgan moment. If I have a problem with it, to get back to that thought, there is something, a little bit, the trope of the sort of messy woman who kind of can't get it together, but is also impossibly gorgeous, even, I mean, Sharon Horgan is like very much a Hollywood 56. She's on the Jennifer Lopez protocol of that decade. I do find myself sort of wishing for something, you know, everybody else in this cast sort of gets to be more themselves, you know?

• 4:14Speaker 03

  Like, it does seem that the sort of the men that come in and out of her life, from her son Rory, who is played by Killian Murphy, his son Aaron Murphy, like, all of these men sort of get to be more themselves and more messy and more real than the women do on the show. And so it doesn't stand out for me in the pantheon of shows about middle age. It's sort of, it's not doing anything really very new for me, but it's still quite enjoyable. And I love her clothes. In summary, I love her clothes.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  All right, Roxana, we can table her clothes. We can put clothes aside, or we can talk about her clothes.

• 4:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, her clothes are like a whole other episode's worth of content.

• 4:53Speaker 03

  I'll see you there.

• 4:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:55Speaker 04

  I am coming from the place of loving Sharon, and I think I am staying in the place of loving Sharon and enjoying this show. But I think I'm enjoying it for Sharon and less for the show itself, because there's a lot about the show that feels, how to describe this? Like, I'm watching the show, I'm enjoying the show. A day later, I'm not sure I could tell you what happened in an episode. There is sort of like a little bit of formlessness, I think, to the episodic structure, which then makes me think of like, the slightly more cliched things that are happening or what are sticking with me.

• 5:37Speaker 04

  So, you know, Alex has this big question of like, now that she is in this stage of her life, what is the relationship that is going to take her through death? And I guess I was looking for like a little more nuance to that, rather than like, she doesn't want an older man because he looks really old.

• 5:59Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 5:59Speaker 04

  There's a lot of, he looks really old comedy. And so I'm having a entertaining time, but there are certain parts of the show, like a lot of the content about her work as like an agent and the ins and outs of the publishing industry. I really like that part of the show, and I wish that was more of the show. But really what it comes down to is I think the show is being sold as a sex comedy, and I don't think it's a sex comedy. I think it's a parenting comedy.

• 6:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:31Speaker 04

  And so I think my expectations were different from what the show ended up being. And I'm still having a hard time sort of realigning what I expected with what the show actually is.

• 6:44Speaker 01

  Sure, that makes sense. I think we're all grappling with this show in slightly different ways. I mean, there's so much to recommend here. I mean, we have here, for my money, one of the most intelligent and clear-eyed and unsentimental, which is a big deal for me, writer, creators, working now. And she's making a show about something that doesn't, we don't make shows about, like Women at a Time of Life, that's historically gotten ignored. And I think she's approaching it with the same specificity she brings to a lot of her stuff. So it feels like personal experience, even if it isn't. I mean, she said it's based on her own divorce, but also the lives of her friends. So, you know, we talk about this all the time on this show. Specificity feels like universality, right? If you go specific enough, you're going to hit some universal truths. And I identified with her, even when she was making stupid choices, which she does a lot.

• 7:29Speaker 03

  Often.

• 7:31Speaker 01

  The biggest trick this show pulls off is somehow, as you mentioned, Roxana, I mean, this show is set in the world of publishing, in book publishing, and it still feels fresh. Because it's not like the 1995 rom-com book publishing. She's kept her ear to the ground. You know, she takes a few shots at romanticy, and they're cheap shots, but they're funny. You know, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna begrudge her that. And I do think the show is called Youth, not because it's like an ab-fab farce where she's like grasping and botox and all that kind of stuff. It's called Youth because suddenly, a lot of the relationships in her life feel like high school again. Like, why is my friend mad at me? Does this guy like me or not? And that tracks for me. That's what happens when your life jumps the track you thought it was going to be on forever.

• 8:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:13Speaker 01

  Unfortunately, the show is also called Youth, because maybe 30, sometimes 40% of it revolves around her son. In a show that I think goes out of its way to avoid cliche, that kid is the most stereotypical, surly TV teen, and everything surrounding him is just, it's not dramatized, it's not specific enough. At one point, he finally tells his mom what's going on with him, and it is the most boring, generic, TikTok-coded, male loneliness epidemic, toxic masculinity-like BS. And of course, I want to say, I get why he expresses it the way he does. He's a kid.

• 8:55Speaker 01

  He would express himself in this kind of pat, predigested, social media, meme speak language. Doesn't make me want to watch it, doesn't make it interesting. It's like she created this very detailed landscape painting and put a stick figure in the middle of it.

• 9:10Speaker 03

  Yes, that's right.

• 9:10Speaker 01

  It's not, it's not the performance, the kid's good, it's the writing. And Barry, let me check in with you first, because I'm on record for hating the surly TV teen as an archetype. So I worry I'm overreacting. You got two sons, this, some of these things must be top of mind for you.

• 9:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, I live with archetypes.

• 9:26Speaker 01

  How does Rory strike you?

• 9:27Speaker 03

  He seemed to be sort of an avatar for all of the desires that have gone unmet with her. And so you end up being bounced immediately back to her, which I'm kind of like, that's fine, I'm done thinking about my kids, like, whatever. You are correct to say that his interior life, I almost, you know, it's funny, there's a moment where he's scrolling around and looking at a comedian, Mitch Hedberg, and he searches him and sees that he died, you know, obviously quite young. I thought, oh, maybe we'll get sort of a sensitive, interesting way of like what it means to sort of back around into that piece of the web that we now sort of call the manosphere. But it was sort of the last moment of it. And as a result, he sort of felt more like a, you know, the sort of an emotional purse

• 10:12Speaker 03

  that she was carrying around, rather than a real character. Do you know what I mean?

• 10:16Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 10:17Speaker 03

  And so for me, like, I don't, it's funny that it made an impression on you guys, because to me, it literally didn't. You know, I literally, and again, maybe it's because I'm like out here, you know, I live with bro, ma, you know, so maybe I was just like, I don't need to. But I just, it did not make an impression on me.

• 10:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, we've got more thoughts about Youth after the break.

• 10:38Speaker 05

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• 11:51Speaker 01

  Welcome back. Roxana, let's pick up with you. I know you have thoughts on this.

• 11:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think for me, this is the most frustrating part of the show by far. And maybe it's because I recently watched Cape Fear, Apple TV's Cape Fear, and there is a very similar problem for me within that show, which is that there is a teenage son character who also has sort of a situation that occurred at school with another student. And he doesn't know what that means about his identity and who he's going to be. And his parents are unfailingly supportive. And it doesn't feel like the show really knows

• 12:33Speaker 04

  what to say about like teen boy loneliness. Neither of these shows knows what to say, I don't think. And in Cape Fear, that character is played by Joe Anders, who is Kate Winslet's son. In this show, it is played by Aaron Murphy, who is Killian Murphy's son. So there is this like nepo baby's sons thing happening in the presentation of these characters and who is playing them.

• 12:59Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 13:00Speaker 04

  But I feel like this is like an influence of adolescence. Like, we understand that this is a problem, and we don't know what there is to say about it past it's a problem. And the show stays in that register, youth stays in that register, too long, I think. And so there is this huge portion of the show. Yeah, Glenn, it's like 40% of the show, I would say.

• 13:23Speaker 01

  I think so, right?

• 13:23Speaker 04

  Is about this like teen boy Rory and what he's going to do and how he views himself and all this stuff. And I'm like, where's Sharon? Where is Sharon? And what's going on at the publisher? Because I am, perhaps, this is incredibly callous, I am very unmoved by this specific type of storytelling if it's not told with the finesse of adolescence. And I just don't think it's told with the finesse of adolescence.

• 13:53Speaker 03

  Can I ask, does this feel to you that the sort of the manosphere storyline has become what the sort of sexual assault in the past of a woman was in the 90s?

• 14:03Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 14:03Speaker 03

  That it is now the shorthand for teen boys. And it is like the interior life, you aren't actually getting a personality, you're just getting that storyline.

• 14:12Speaker 04

  Right.

• 14:13Speaker 03

  To me, I was just like, I can't really see her behind the purse.

• 14:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:15Speaker 04

  It's a very reactive way to write a character in a show that is otherwise, I think, fairly proactive in showing what Alex wants from her life and how she is dealing with her aging parents and her responsibilities at work. The balance is not quite there for me. And I think that is what adds to my sense of when an episode is over, I'm like, I had a nice time. I don't know if I need to watch the next one.

• 14:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:44Speaker 04

  That's something that I sort of kept grappling with while watching this show.

• 14:48Speaker 01

  I think the balance is being thrown off because the kid's the center of gravity when he shouldn't be. I mean, this is a Sharon Horgan show. You can't fault the casting. You can never fault the casting in a Sharon Horgan show. We got Freddie Fox as a rival agent.

• 15:00Speaker 04

  Blissful.

• 15:01Speaker 03

  Harriet Walter.

• 15:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 15:02Speaker 03

  No, I mean, there's a parade of people.

• 15:04Speaker 01

  Harriet Walter makes everything better. I mean, and I didn't recognize Freddie Fox if it wasn't for that jawline. Because I think underneath those glasses, and is that a wig?

• 15:11Speaker 03

  No, I think that's the hair.

• 15:12Speaker 01

  But also Tim McInerney, who Americans might not know the name unless they are Britcom nerds like I am, but he was, you know, on Blackadder in a lot of different incarnations back in the day. And to see him, because I grew up on this guy, seeing him playing a guy in his 60s that Alex is dating is kind of yikes. But here's where I think we're all talking to this. The rhythm is off here.

• 15:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 15:34Speaker 01

  I watched the show with my husband, who bailed after a few episodes. And I was like, why are you bailing? You love Sharon Horgan. Look at the hair. Nothing else. Look at the hair. Best hair on television.

• 15:44Speaker 03

  Hundred percent.

• 15:45Speaker 01

  When Connie Britton is not on television. Let's be clear.

• 15:46Speaker 03

  That's true.

• 15:47Speaker 01

  He said, I thought it would be funnier.

• 15:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly right.

• 15:50Speaker 01

  He's not an idiot. He knows it's not a sitcom. It's not a punchline-driven show. He knows it's character-based. And he knew that going in. But he said Catastrophe was funnier. Bad Sisters was funnier. This show, he said, is humorous.

• 16:01Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 16:01Speaker 01

  Oof. And then he dropped the mic and left.

• 16:04Speaker 04

  It has situations that you recognize as being funny.

• 16:07Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 16:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:09Speaker 03

  Yes. Oh, she dropped a burger.

• 16:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 16:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 16:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 16:12Speaker 03

  I mean, that to me, that joke, which is in the poster, is to me, exactly what's wrong with the comedy. Like, oh, no, I'm a messy woman. I dropped this and now I'm going to eat it off the floor. Like, that too has become a shorthand for, like, menopausal life. But again, that said, you know, it is fun to watch. I wasn't, while it was happening, I was engaged.

• 16:35Speaker 04

  Exactly right.

• 16:35Speaker 03

  You know? It's just I got up and then flipped their magazine.

• 16:39Speaker 04

  It's such a strange thing to talk about because we all had an enjoyable time.

• 16:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 16:44Speaker 04

  Watching each episode. But then it sort of came time to, you know, if we had been watching this week to week, I don't know if each of us would have stayed with it week to week.

• 16:55Speaker 03

  I would have forgotten to go back.

• 16:57Speaker 01

  See, this is the thing. We all experienced it because we got screeners of the first seven episodes. It's kind of a long movie. But the folks who are not going to experience that way, I wonder if they're going to stick around. I mean, I'm gonna, I'm gonna watch the eighth episode when it airs.

• 17:08Speaker 04

  Agreed.

• 17:09Speaker 01

  You are too. Okay.

• 17:10Speaker 03

  Well, I'm curious now because I want to know what you two thought.

• 17:15Speaker 01

  All right. Well, this is not the classic PCHH ringing endorsement, but it is certainly a, don't avoid it. I mean, like, check it out. It's Sharon Horgan. She's like pizza.

• 17:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:26Speaker 01

  Even not great Sharon Horgan, still Sharon Horgan.

• 17:28Speaker 03

  Mm hmm. Still pretty good.

• 17:29Speaker 01

  Still pretty good.

• 17:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:31Speaker 01

  Okay, that brings us to the end of our show. She's better than pizza. Roxana Hadadi, Barry Hardiman, thank you so much for being here.

• 17:38Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 17:39Speaker 03

  Thanks.

• 17:39Speaker 01

  This episode was produced by Hapsa Fathama. Liz Metzger and Mike Katz have been edited by our showrunner Jessica Riddy, and Halokum in provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Glen Weldon, and we'll see you all next time.

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