Horgan\u2019s hilarious new show probes the perils of ageing and the horror of being single again \u2013 and it has sex scenes so wild you\u2019ll be laughing for weeks. The creator and her co-stars open up about Youth<\/p>\n
When Sharon Horgan walked into HBO to pitch her new series, Youth, she basically just said \u201csandwich generation\u201d to them. Alex, the protagonist, is squished between a teenage son and two elderly parents. That\u2019s the classic; the rest of it \u2013 the recent divorce, the dating hell, the busy, creative professional life full of pricks \u2013 is the icing on the sandwich (if you like). Horgan had been incubating some of the characters for five years, but \u201chonestly\u201d, she tells me, \u201cI said about three sentences and a week later, they said yes. I\u2019ve never had that experience before.\u201d<\/p>\n
You might think you can imagine it, but Youth is unlike any portrait you\u2019ve ever seen in the gallery of (for brevity) menopausal women doing everything for everyone. There\u2019s an urgency and valour to it that is very much drawn from Horgan\u2019s own experience. \u201cEverything just changed for me when I hit my 50s,\u201d she says. \u201cI was very bamboozled but I really had a hunger to make time count.\u201d Not every situation is lifted directly from her own life, post-divorce \u2013 she\u2019s also borrowing from her friends, she emphasises \u2013 but in general terms, the pressures, the worries, the outrages, the surprise and the delight are all so exquisitely drawn that even if it\u2019s not Horgan herself, you hope someone, somewhere, is living this in real life.<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/64d89537051d89e58d9bf0076912faacac83f82d\/662_534_3372_2699\/master\/3372.jpg?width=140&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=4ecb6a6308c466c84dc728ae8a15f32b\" "\\"\u2018I")
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