In the US: Tuesdays, 10/9c, TV Land
Ah, TV Land. The network for people who like TV to be how it was in the olden days, with studio audiences, jokes you can see coming a mile off and no one doing anything that came into fashion in the past two decades.
Or at least it used to be, because over the past few years, with shows such as Hot In Cleveland and Jennifer Falls, the network has been trying to crack a slightly younger demographic – fortysomethings. Particularly fortysomething women.
Never has this been more explicit than with Younger, TV Land’s latest, most audience-flattering show, in which the recently divorced 40-year-old Sutton Foster (Bunheads) tries to find a job, only to discover that that’s a lot harder than it sounds. However, when she gets mistaken in a bar for a twentysomething, she gets a full on makeover and lands herself an assistant job at a publishing firm – by pretending to be in her late 20s. Now all she has to do is keep pretending to be a youngster with their Twitters and their krav maga and their mobile phones, while putting up with her new, overbearing, idea-stealing 43-year-old boss Miriam Shor (GCB).
Created and written by Sex and the City creator Darren Star from the novel by Pamela Redmond Satran, Younger is the kind of idea that can work in the fantasy world of a novel written more or less pre-Internet, where you can cast whom you like and not have to worry about Google et al, but which fails horribly onscreen in a series made now.
Foster is 40 and – not to be uncharitable – could probably get away with 35, but only someone in their 40s (or mid-50s in Star’s case) would believe her to be 26. And if that were the show’s only problem, it might be able to get away with it. But Star’s not exactly either down with the kids or the 40 year olds for that matter. He does his best, but the idea that a 40-year-old woman who used to work in publishing would need to Google “How to open a Twitter account” doesn’t wash. Neither does the idea that young co-worker Hilary Duff wouldn’t immediately Google and Facebook her new co-worker and immediately see through the lie. When Satran wrote the book in 2005, it was plausible, but not now.
It doesn’t help that one of Star’s target references for what all the young people are talking about is Judge Judy.
Even if we excuse the logistical and cultural problems, we have the show’s next dilemma, which is that its content is largely wearisome. Foster, desperately trying to hide her age, almost gives herself away… How? Do you want to guess? Is it because she inadvertently let’s slip some childhood memory of growing up in the 80s? Maybe it’s because someone from her college days turns up? How about when she said she’d been to Princeton and spent the time studying rather than organising protests and sit-ins? Less than a decade previously…
No, it’s because she takes off all her clothes in a women’s changing room revealing her pubic area isn’t as well groomed or free of grey hairs as those of her younger friends. Cue long discussion with best pal Debi Mazar (Entourage) about the kids of today and their styling fashions. That’s about as deep as it gets.
As a side note, maybe I’m just not very studly and toned for my age, but if I were trying to hide my true age from someone 15 years younger than me, taking off all my clothes in front of them probably wouldn’t be top of the list of things I’d do. I might wear a towel at least.
Anyway, back on topic, occasionally, the show veers into slightly more interesting, Sex and the City territory, with Foster trying to help Duff be more assertive with her boyfriend and Duff quoting Taylor Swift to justify her helping other women. But this feels like a show written by someone who doesn’t really have much contact with any of the groups it’s about and who only wants to sell its audience a fanciful piece of flattery – yes, you, too, could be young again and better at it than those youngsters are…
To be honest, if that is your bag, you might as well go whole hog, bring in some time travel and go off and watch the very, very similar, much better and actually more plausible Hindsight. That’s also got a better soundtrack. And Laura Ramsey.
