THE COUCH: Sharon Horgan’s Youth and the Call My Agent! universe

(upbeat music) - Welcome to the couch, I'm Jason DeRosso. This is ABC Radio Nationals Weekly TV and Streaming Review Chat. And you can't have a chat alone, that would be weird. So sitting next to me, as she does every week, is the TV Connoisseur, Wendley Mar Connoisseur? - I'll take Connoisseur, it just reminds me of ice cream. - Yeah, you see everything, and you're all seeing in the TV landscape. - Yeah, I hover over above the clouds. - Above the clouds, just watching it all, 24/7. And so you will be able to tell us first of all about Sharon Horgan and who she is, because today we're looking at her new show called Youth. And my question to you would be, is there a better creator who makes shows, aimed not exclusively at women, but predominantly at women than Sharon Horgan. 'Cause I can't think of one, but it's not a leading question, 'cause maybe I don't, I don't know. - I think there are quite a few, I think female TV writers who are very good at this, but Sharon Horgan is definitely in that top echelon. She's an Irish writer and actor. Her first show was called Pulling, it was about 20 years ago, and it was about a young woman in her late 20s, early 30s, who gets out of this engagement and decides to actually live life and it's awkward and it's all of those things. Her, you know, Magnum Opus for me so far is Catastrophe, which is this great comedy she co-created with Rob Delaney in 2015 about two people in their late 30s who have a one night stand. She's Irish, he's American, they're in London. She gets pregnant from it and they decide to wildly have a go at it, being like a family. Not round for four seasons, I think it's one of the best shows of this century. And now we have Youth, which is really a spiritual follow-up to Catastrophe 'cause it's about the next phase really in that, you know, in a woman's life. It's about a character named Alex that Horgan plays. She's in her 50s, she's menopause adjacent. She's been divorced many years. Her son is about to leave for university. So she thinks, oh my God, this is my chance. This is my freedom, I'm gonna start dating properly. I'm gonna have great sex. I'm gonna, you know, live life again. Except things don't quite work out that way. You know, the first time she's set up on a date with a 67 year old and she's like, aghast the someone thinks. - Excruciating POV shots of his turkey neck. - Yeah, and he's chewing. - I felt myself reaching for my own neck with his going, oh my goodness. It's the female gaze. Oh my goodness. - It's the female gaze in front of it. Unrelentingly bleak, but it's hilarious because she is what we've now termed the sandwich generation where you're being pushed from beneath by your children who are not really fleeing the nest and living independently. And then you're being pushed from above by your parents because they're aging, they're ailing, they have health issues and you're the one who's also gonna look after them. So the idea that you're now 50 and fabulous and you can now finally step into your power with financial stability. - With financial stability, it's crap, it's BS and youth very much plays in this sandbox. - All right, let's hear it from the trailer. I warning, there's sexual content ahead. - It looks like it's arthritis and you know a joy. - So what natural is this is just the start of a general decline? - It's just an age thing. You have a decreased range of opening. It's a no more blow jobs for you. - No more work for me? (upbeat music) - Do you think you can still be sexy when you're sexy? Waking the club. - That's too much eye contact. (upbeat music) - When did you start working with you? - About 10 years ago. Books are more of my specialty. - I want you to trust me more, Sam. I want to be a partner. - In a business, I spent 30 years booting. The Augusti. - My son, Rory, heads off to university next month. - Love you. - Yeah, love you. - Love you. - Thinkin' I get back out there. Just fun, lightly degrading sex. - Mom. - Yeah, mom. - I just have a habit of coming in at the weirdest moments or the most inconvenient moments mid-sentence. This, we could hear in that trailer. This has various elements to it. There are many plot lines. I like the fact that she works with the best friend who's also her boss, who's black. And so there's, there were all sorts of layers to that relationship, which is quite fun. And this, I love it as a satire of the publishing industry too. - Yeah, and they, you know, there's an episode set at like Frankfurt Book Fair, which is like the biggest event in the publishing world. And they're coming up against things that I think, you know, as audiences we're kind of familiar with. It's just the rise of romanticcy. You know, there's a-- - I love, we have to mention Goblin Seed. - Goblin Seed, it is distressing. But yes, one of her former clients who's a real creep that she fired for being a creep has now self-published this incredibly popular romanticcy novel with Goblin Seed in it. That is-- - And everyone's reading it. Wherever she goes in the season, people reading it. - Yeah, it's haunting her. This decision to drop this sort of-- And he is continually rubbing her face in that decision, which is very degrading. Look, we have to mention, yeah, Killian Murphy's son, who plays Rory, this 15-year-old, who's failing to launch, she's very vulnerable. It's a superb performance. I think it's arguably the real gem of this narrative weave here, mixing metaphors. But it, to me, it is the most interesting and fascinating relationship. It's a very fraught relationship mother, teenage son, absent father who pops in and out. He's off shooting, he's an actor who's off shooting with his younger partner, Spence Opera, in Canada for American TV. I think it's a wonderful performance. It's a wonderful, dynamic. I mean, Sharon Horgan often minds her own life. She kind of likes the idea that people don't know what's real and what's not, that what's happened to her, what hasn't. But she actually, in real life, has two teenage daughters. All, I think one of them might be 20. So she has grown up, she has grown up kids, but not a son. And I think there is some really interesting stuff that they're sort of miming from, maybe, her friends' experiences. The manosphere, as well. The manosphere is in there. In a not very obvious way. In fact, this is quite comical. But I just want, as an aside, I did not know until quite recently when I saw a comedy show from the Australian comedian, Lizzie Hu, that spur maxing was a thing. You know about it now. And we all know about it now, and it's in the show. Well, it's really sensitively handled. And I think it's a show that also drops in these moments of online life in a way that, but one of the first, you know, it's, they're very rare. It's very rare that I see online content inserted into a TV show like this or a film that does feel like, yeah, that's how online feels. When you're, you know, you're just on the bus and you catch some real or something on your phone. And the way they do, that's quite good. Yeah, and especially with things that are quite serious, like the manosphere, it's almost in the background. But not like in the sense that it doesn't knock you over the head with it. And you're kind of, you're aware that he's sort of playing in that, and she is maybe, maybe peripherally aware that it's happening, but probably not because everything else in her life is, you know, demanding so much. And they really capture the thing that, you know, he's 15, oh, sorry, he's not 15, he's 18. He's, he's, he's pretty innocent in a way. And he's a pretty good kid, but he does make some pretty poor decisions. And they really do, the physicality of the teenager just lying in bed, catatonic, except they're glued to the phone and doing something really complex on the phone is just, they nail that. Yeah, and he, and the frustration of the parent with that. Yeah, and he's in search of like a male role model, if you will, as well. And, and he kind of latches on to other men in the show that's not his dad. Yeah, question for you. Do you think she criticises everyone else, except herself in, in the show? I was wondering about this. No, 'cause I think she is critical of herself. Yeah, I think the characters that she's often written, which also includes, you know, the show, bad sisters, and the HBO series that she did with Sarah Jessica Parker, that I don't think she was actually in herself called Divorce, which I, you know, didn't love. I think she's always quite bracing about those lead characters. They are far from perfect, that they do stuff up. They do selfish things. And I think there are definitely, and there's an episode later on in the season, we've seen them all, except for the finale, which was held back, that, you know, you kind of see her and you go, "Lady, you are also contributing to this mess." Yeah, I think you're right. And also, she's written in the character of a sister here who does have a go at her occasionally, because she, that sister is, is dealing with the bulk of the caring when it comes to their elderly parents. So, yeah, no, I agree, I agree. It's just in case people are kind of thinking it's the man-hating kind of show there's a bit of justified griping about the men in her life. But no, I think it's a sort of 360 degree criticism of what's going on. Yeah, definitely. She puts Alex, the lead character, in some very compromising positions where you kind of, you know, sit back on your perch on your couch and go, "I wouldn't have done that." Yeah, it's really great. These are half-hour episodes. It is streaming on HBO Max in Australia. And yeah, we've seen seven of the eight of this season. I think it's really great. Really great. really good. Yeah, yeah, youth. Okay, continuing the theme of characters who deal with creatives for a living. And I couldn't work out of Sharon Hogan was a publisher or a literary agent. I think she's an agent. She's an agent, right? Yeah. Okay, because we're on to not one show, but kind of two shows. It's sort of like a mini universe because it's now there's a kind of telling movie or a movie that's gone straight to streaming that's come out of the same sort of world. And I'm talking about the call my agent mini universe. We can have the Marvel universe. So why not the call my agent, my agent cinematic universe. I love it. began with the French original series set in a Paris talent agency that represents sort of high end actors. And that included many real-life stars playing themselves in cameos and kind of actually quite substantial plots. And there's been an American spin-off called 10% of English language, sorry. And now there's a film. Let's play a clip to get you in the mood. How are you? How are you? How are you? I'm good. Yeah. How do you like you in your office in Paris? Oh, I love it. You know, I love being here. Hey, I read your script. You did? Yeah. Really? What did you think? It's amazing. No, honestly. You like it? Yeah, it has mind blowing. No, really? Yes. Oh gosh, that makes me really happy. The only thing is I was thinking, why does that woman have to kill her husband? You know, it gets so dark, so fast. And then you're in the woods for a really long time. It's like the cabin and the mud. I would get to Paris sooner. Okay, what are we listening to there? That's from the film. That is, the American voice you hear is Eva Longoriel playing herself. And the French accented voice you hear is Camille Coteau, who plays Andreille, who is one of the lead characters from Courmage and French Idol Disposal. And she's fantastic. She's brilliant. So kind of tough. Yeah, she's abrasive, but you'll love her for her. Yeah, she's queer. She is very, takes no prisoners in one way, but also has her vulnerable side suit. Wonderful character. And it really launched Coteau, I think, to at least world attention. Yeah. She's so good in the role. Yeah, like she's well known in France, but yeah, so I think now everyone else has paid much more attention since Courmage and so what we've got here is a film that was just released to Netflix that picks up about five years after the series story ended. And you know, all the main crew, which also included like Matthias and just all these other characters, they've, you know, gone off into their own universes. They're all doing different things. Most of them are not agents anymore. Andrea is set to direct her first ever film as well. So she's like hopped the fence over to the creative side instead of the management side. And it's essentially about all the things that can go wrong in the lead up to a production on a movie. And I mean, it's warm and fuzzy in a way because what we'll see is everyone coming back together to essentially try and save this movie and all the relationships that need to be repaired to get to that point. You just that work. Do you think the war and fuzziness because the one thing that was great especially, but see, I haven't seen the English language version of Courmage in 10% but I've seen I really love the French version. And I guess the good thing about that it being TV could just keep sort of cliffhangering along and never quite resolving or just as things resolve that would things would go wrong. That would go wrong. Go per-shape it again. I think it works because yes, it's warm and fuzzy because ultimately this is, you know, one of those tropes about found family and often the people you work with in these screen stories is that things do go wrong in this movie. There's so many things go wrong and you know, things will continue to go wrong. And half of the appeal of the film, the series is just like the absurd shenanigans that happen in this world, in their world. There's a lot of physical comedy, there's a lot of over-the-top humour and it works because it's all so heightened because we also always think of show business types as just being really dramatic. Yeah, yeah. You know what, there's Courmage and Bollywood, there's a whole heap of other related series, it really is a universe for public, they've all done it. But as a starting off point, go to the French one, if you haven't seen any of them before, it's on their specs on demand so it's free to look at because it's so well written, it's really intelligent comedy, it is a bit broad and it's a good watch, it's kind of it's warm. It's very warm and you also get some great celebrity cameos, like especially from the original series. Yeah. You know, people like Jean-Joy, Jean-Doujardin and Isabel Hupeur and Juliet Benouche all making fun of themselves. No, it's fantastic. Okay, call my agent, the series on SBS on demand, the movie on Netflix and the English language version 10% on prime video. That is it for us, this has been the couch. I'm Jason Derosso. I'm Wenleem Ma. See ya. Bye!