All of human life is here – all its heart, all its humour.

“Youth” should cement her status as TV’s premier chronicler of the upper-middle-class, middle-aged female experience.

The escapades fly along at a tidy 30 minutes an episode, sometimes filthy, sometimes cringe, but as with Catastrophe, always ringing truthful.

Her take on the fallacy of the empty nest is fresh. .... Horgan also writes female raunchy outrageously. This is not your mother’s menopause.

Youth often feels both funnier and realer for recognizing how self-involved Alex can be. But its shrewdest, most quietly poignant insight is that being old enough to know better does not, in fact, always mean you act better.

“Youth” doesn’t reach the highs of Horgan’s “Catastrophe,” but it possesses her familiar sense of humor and animosity toward a world eager to define a woman’s place in it.

Youth is missing the pathos of Catastrophe or the nastiness of Motherland. It feels a bit like a big American streaming service has sanded down the edges of her writing, leaving it as warm and human as ever but missing that real spark.