Sharon Horgan’s Youth explores post-divorce

Sharon Horgan walked into HBO to pitch her new series Youth and simply said “sandwich generation” to them. The pitch was accepted within a week, marking the fastest greenlight she has ever received.

Alex, the protagonist, is caught between a teenage son and two elderly parents, with the recent divorce, dating struggles, and demanding creative career forming the rest of the story. Horgan had been developing some characters for five years before the pitch.

She says everything changed for her when she hit her 50s, leaving her feeling bamboozled but driven to make time count. While not every situation is drawn directly from her post-divorce life, she confirms the pressures, worries, outrages, surprise, and delight in the show are exquisitely drawn from real-life experiences, including those of her friends.

Filming a key scene in east London on a blowy day in April, Horgan worked with co-star Rupert Friend, who plays Patrick, a character slightly younger than Alex. Friend describes Patrick as indecisive and shambling, not a Prince Charming, and notes he wants children while knowing Alex will not go down that path again.

Friend observes that Sharon flips the proverbial biological clock on its head, pointing out that men often assume their fertility lasts indefinitely without considering the emotional weight of timing and choice.

A key moment in the scene involves Alex being hit by a cyclist as she walks away, an event that, while not overstated, becomes hilarious in the final cut. Horgan’s ability to balance jokes and pathos is praised by her cast.

Aran Murphy, who plays Horgan’s on-screen son Ruari and is the son of Cillian Murphy, says she could have chemistry with a toaster due to her fizzing energy. Rupert Friend adds that Sharon is brilliant at writing, capable of dancing between humour and emotional depth in a way few others can.

Horgan herself explains her approach: she is allergic to sentimentality and cannot abide anything sweet or schmaltzy, but she loves genuine emotion and wants audiences to feel something real, even if it means giving them pain alongside the laughs.

Murphy describes his character Ruari as a believably wrecking-ball 18-year-old son, some actions are intentional, like wrecking things on the last day of secondary school, others accidental, such as missteps in his first week at university. The stakes are high and the behaviour feels plausible.

Horgan reflects on parenting this age group, noting she does not have a son but has two daughters, Sadhbh (22) and Amer (18). She says Gen Z carries an awful feeling of being the last generation, told everything is fucked and that AI will take their jobs, yet they care deeply and feel things intensely.

Aran Murphy, speaking by Zoom from Italy where he is on holiday, is reserved in real life, but his performance as Ruari is described as one of the most thrillingly angry teenage portrayals ever. Horgan says they got lucky with him, as nothing about his performance feels like acting, it made working together effortless.

She wanted Ruari to be complex but not in a Dawson’s Creek way, a real boy who’s a little bit broken. All Alex wants is for him to normalise, but she questions what normal even means.

Ruari is likely just as furious with his mother for still having gentleman callers. Patrick is not Alex’s only love interest; there is also a sex scene with Tim McInnerny (known for playing Percy in Blackadder) that the author says they are still laughing at weeks later.

Rupert Friend ruefully remarks that he is really the best of a bad bunch, a line he is happy to take as a quote for his gravestone. Despite the flaws, the men are drawn so truthfully that audiences cannot help but love them slightly, except perhaps the ex-husband, who is more of an emotional no-mark than a bad guy.

When Horgan found herself divorced, she genuinely thought she’d be alone forever and didn’t even know if she’d ever have sex again. She describes the extreme fear of loneliness but also a sudden freedom, her kids had finished school, and she felt she had time to try and get things right.

Alex’s love life is not over, but the show avoids being a “you go, girl” tale where women remain perpetually 35 through Botox and force of will. Instead, Horgan says putting oneself out there at her age is still incredibly difficult, as the men left are often institutionally single, divorced, or seeking much younger partners.

The subplot involving Alex’s ageing parents is described as honest and exhilarating. Horgan notes that dramedy often treats the elderly with respectful saccharine, skipping over the stubbornness, denial, and endless hospital appointments.

As an orphan, her mother is still alive, her father died in 2023, she says she is allowed to state that the non-cooperation from ageing parents is a huge part of the experience. Ageing is hard, especially when it affects mental sharpness or mobility in someone who has always been a go-getter.

Losing basic functions is brutal, but from Alex’s perspective, the constant planning and phone calls become a huge part of life, affecting her sibling relationships over time. Horgan wished she could have explored this more, but time and space ran out, it could have been a whole show on its own.

Alex works in publishing, and the series features standout performances, including Anne Reid as a grande dame of airport fiction who turns her hand to erotica. Horgan says she could talk about Reid for the entirety of the interview, marvelling at her being 91 and still delivering work at that level while caring deeply.

Harriet Walter plays her ice-cold daughter, and Damian Lewis, within 30 seconds of arriving on screen, distils everything bad about publishing, celebrity, London, private members’ clubs, and the world.

Horgan says everyone who came on to do their bits influenced the show, as she was writing it at the same time as making it, a process she describes as hell. On the upside, it allowed her to build relationships with co-stars as she wrote and incorporate those connections into the script.

Friend recalls deep conversations about what love actually is, particularly the heartbreak of thinking for failure: if we meet and immediately think we could date but might break up, why do anything? Everything carries a pessimistic possibility, and Alex is always considering it, but that’s no way to live.

He references Horgan’s earlier works, Pulling and Motherland, noting they did the same thing, turning seemingly drab premises into must-watch shows. Youth is technically about the grinding sandwich years when everything gets harder at once and joints stop working.

But it is about the sheer bliss of being alive when so much happens that is funny, stitched together by a fearsomely long to-do list.

Youth is on HBO Max from 21 September.