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There’s a point, usually around one’s mid-twenties, when you realise that adulthood isn’t about being free to do what you want, but having to deal with things you’d rather avoid: fixing broken boilers; hosting dull dinner parties; paying for uninsured colonoscopies.
These are some of the rites of passage that crop up in FX’s Adults: a new eight-part comedy about being caught between carefree youth and responsibility-laden maturity. As a sitcom set in New York following a group of tightknit 24-year-olds, it has been billed as Friends for a hyper-online, anxious and outspoken generation. But where Friends presented an idealised image of a cosy social circle in the big city, Adults takes things to the other end of the spectrum with its portrait of an insalubrious bunch who are both self-absorbed and dysfunctionally codependent.
While the gang share an alarming intimacy — to the point of developing a “group smell” — each character also represents a specific personality archetype and identity. There’s clueless layabout Samir (Malik Elassal), in whose childhood home in Queens everyone lives rent-free. Then there’s preppy Billie (Lucy Freyer): a one-time high achiever struggling to find her place in the world, she spends her days making unsolicited pop-ins at her old school in search of validation. Freewheeling flatmate Issa (Amita Rao), meanwhile, tries to teach her how to let loose.
As a loud, brash narcissist who demands everyone’s attention at all times, Issa is consistently obnoxious but with little comedic pay-off. Similarly extroverted, and filling the rather dated gay-best-friend role, Anton (Owen Thiele) at least brings genuine sweetness to his sass. Last and very much least developed is Issa’s spacey boyfriend Paul Baker (Jack Innanen), who mainly exists to serve a running joke in which he is only called by his full name.
The cast of relative newcomers all play their narrow parts well, but their comic instincts don’t compensate for a lack of chemistry. Too often the group’s supposed closeness feels forced and the zeitgeisty Gen-Z zingers shoehorned in. A hang-out comedy shouldn’t have to work this hard.
Nor be hard to watch. While there’s something to be said for a show that doesn’t sanitise the griminess of flat-sharing twenty-somethings, Adults can often be wilfully vulgar. The opening scene, in which Issa tries to, er, beat a subway masturbator at his own gross game, makes for a pretty excruciating first impression.
Look past the uncomfortable crude humour that dominates the early episodes and there are enough funny scenarios — like Anton and Issa digitally stalking a dream man who happens to be a New York rat carrying a tracking device — that offer signs of promise. But if Adults gets renewed for a second season, it could do with growing up a bit.
★★☆☆☆
On Disney+ in the UK and Hulu in the US
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