Catastrophe

Motherland.

Catastrophe.

Amanda Lang.

Catastrophe.

Bad Sisters.

Bad Sisters.

Today's guest has spent the last 20 years turning the messiest parts of real life into some of the funniest television around.

She went from growing up on a turkey farm in Ireland and selling bongs in Camden to creating shows including Catastrophe, Motherland and Bad Sisters, running her own production company, winning BAFTAs and starring in Hollywood films.

And her new show, Youth, might be her most personal yet.

Please, everybody, welcome to the show, Sharon Horgan.

Oh, my God.

But, yeah, it was really good fun.

And then, so, one of the biggest chapters of your career comes along with Catastrophe.

Yeah.

Like, I think one of the best people doing this and making something dark really funny is the Irish actor and showrunner Sharon Horgan.

She's given us shows like Pulling and Catastrophe and Bad Sisters, and now she's got a brand new show on HBO.

It's called Youth.

I'm Elamin Abdelmahmoud, and this is Commotion.

Mm-hmm.

And so, um, her- one of her early shows was Pulling, which is about being a 30-something and, uh, sort of the friend group and the challenges of that period of adulthood.

She then had a show on Amazon Prime several years later, uh, called Catastrophe, which is, I think how many, um, many audiences came to know her, which is about, um, getting unexpectedly pregnant, and that one's a, a two-hander with her and, uh, actor Rob Delaney.

Yeah.

She's so good at chronicling life as it changes.

So like Catastrophe, her show that she did at Rob Delaney, they played a couple who meet and get pregnant very quickly and decide to just make a go of it.

It's so funny and so astute.

motherland she's been involved in writing that and i think executive producing that shouldn't star in it another huge hit that's about early parenthood you know the school gates it's so funny and philippa dunn is in that it's really kind of made her a star and then of course got bad sisters which isn't necessarily to many life stages but at the same time is very distinct about women in their 40s in particular i think you can watch that on apple tv so she's always tended to be influenced by what's going on in her life i think she very generously minds her own life for us so there motherhood it could be divorce she actually did get divorced herself in the last 10 years or in the last kind of decade and she's with two grown-up daughters and this is youth is a series about a woman who's divorced in her 50s she's parenting a university-aged son and she's basically trying to figure out what her next few decades are all about um she plays the title character alex or the main character alex and then her best friend sam is played by the great charlene white she's so cool and so kind of glam she's her boss at a literary agency her son Rory is played by Aaron Murphy we can talk about him in a minute yes he is Cillian's son he's also in War which I mentioned at the start of the podcast so this really is his year Owen Macdonald is so funny in this he pops up in different things I think he might have been a Bad Sisters maybe I may be imagining that anyway he plays Alex's ex-husband Lorcan I love the shows there's loads of Irish names and Irish people in her in her series and he's in her phone as Dick for Brains which is so funny she also if you want to know how good a dad he is she describes him at one point as fatherish at best which I just think is a really funny way of describing a terrible dad Humour is so important to this series.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, notably 2015's Catastrophe with Rob Delaney, um, which was probably most people's introduction to her-

Yes

... and to her comedy.

Um, I love her.

I, I think...

Yeah, I think Catastrophe was my introduction, and then I went back and watched Pulling, um, and Bad Sisters, and, um, I, I think what she's done, if you look at that 20-year span of, of work, even starting with Pulling because, um, every show she makes is sort of about a woman doing a thing that you would expect, but later than you would expect.

Hmm, that's a good way of putting it.

A lot of the people who pop up for just a couple of scenes do have a pretty hefty resume because almost all of them are Canadian, so they have worked in a billion American productions.

But this guy has actually worked on a really fantastic British show called Catastrophe.

Not genre-based, but if anybody likes Sharon Horgan, uh, it's her and oh, that American guy.

[laughs]