There’s a moment in Sharon Horgan’s new show, Youth, when – as protagonist Alex (Horgan) is seeing her son off to university – she inadvertently begins to run after the car that’s taking him away. And then she catches herself, and slows. And then she starts up again. It was such a tender, vicious glimpse into the future that I found myself sobbing into the sofa and cursing her name.
All of which is to say: Sharon Horgan is back and she’s better than ever. Youth is the representation every woman who has ever slapped on an oestrogen patch after a divorce, looked around and thought “What the hell now?” has been waiting for. Horgan herself has described it in interviews as forming the third part of a loose trilogy that began with Pulling. Co-written with Dennis Kelly, Pulling was about three thirtysomething antitheses to Bridget Jones, whose dark chaos apparently scared the BBC so much they unexpectedly cancelled it just as it was truly getting into its stride. That was followed by Catastrophe, written by and starring Horgan, with Rob Delaney, as a couple who have a fling, find that she’s pregnant and end up making a brutal, hilarious go of things.
