An age-inappropriate comedy
Dear Watchers,Imagine your best friend started dating someone half his age. Now imagine that someone happened to be your daughter. That’s the premise of “Alice and Steve,” a British dramedy now streaming on Hulu. This setup could have easily resulted in a broad sitcom rife with tasteless jokes. But the show, created by Sophie Goodhart (“Sex Education”) and directed by Tom Kingsley (“Stath Lets Flats,” BBC’s “Ghosts”), is a nuanced, often laugh-out-loud examination of aging, parenthood, friendship and our hunger for affirmation from the people we love. In the first episode of six, Alice (Nicola Walker) and Steve (Jemaine Clement), who dated when they were young and have remained close friends, are at a bar, where Alice encourages Steve to hit on a much younger woman. He’s been divorced for a few years, and he tells Alice he might still want to have a child. So she figures he should consider prospects who haven’t yet hit middle age. “Younger women are just older women, but younger,” she offers cheerfully. Steve does not have any success at the bar, but later he makes an unexpected connection with Izzy (Yali Topol Margalith), Alice’s daughter, who has moved back in with her mother after breaking up with her boyfriend. Izzy is 26. Steve is in his early 50s and used to sleep with Izzy’s mother. They both know that hooking up is a bad idea, but they do it anyway. When Alice finds out, she and Steve engage in a “War of the Roses”-level feud while Steve and Izzy attempt to start a real relationship and Alice’s husband, Daniel (Joel Fry), tries to figure out his place in the whole mess. There is an undeniable ick factor in the idea of Izzy and Steve as a couple, and “Alice and Steve” does not ignore it. Alice brings up details designed to embarrass Steve in front of Izzy’s friends, such as his love of Woody Allen films. (Allen married Soon-Yi Previn, the much younger daughter of his former partner Mia Farrow.) While the series has fun with the age gap, it is also interested in other relationships and their challenges. At one point Daniel complains that Alice does not prioritize their marriage. “You can’t be totally nourished by one person,” she tells him. “It doesn’t work that way.” The entire cast is strong, but Walker, a star of British series like “Last Tango in Halifax” and “Unforgotten,” is particularly memorable. Alice is a reckless and impulsive narcissist, but she is also loving and gregarious, and Walker’s performance is natural, grounded and empathetic. When Alice breaks down in a ladies’ room — “It’s all too late,” she says through tears — it’ll stab you in the heart, whether you’re a “woman of a certain age” or just anyone who has ever felt emotionally malnourished. Also this week
|
