Sharon Horgan's new HBO comedy 'Youth' follows a fiftysomething London literary agent navigating midlife challenges—an empty nest, obsolete career instincts, menopause, and aging parents—when her son unexpectedly returns home from college. Horgan, known for autobiographical storytelling in shows like 'Catastrophe' and 'Divorce,' draws from her own life experiences to create intimate, female-centric comedies that tackle contemporary struggles with lacerating honesty.
A writer reflects on HBO's new Harry Potter TV series as creatively redundant, comparing it to Borges' story about Pierre Menard rewriting Don Quixote identically. The piece explores themes of artistic repetition, reimagining, and whether society can move beyond recreating the past.