Young people are an endangered species on TV these days. Broadcast TV has given up on them entirely, and even cable and streaming shows rarely focus on people in their 20s unless it’s through a sci-fi or supernatural lens. It’s as if TV has thrown up the white flag and surrendered an entire generation to YouTube and TikTok. That’s why it’s a relief to see a show like FX’s Adults hit our screens. (It debuts tonight at 9/8c on FX and streams in full on Hulu starting tomorrow; I’ve seen the first three episodes.) It’s not only a show about young people today, but a very good one: a laidback Gen Z hangout comedy with an easy charm and —most importantly —lots of big laughs.
Adults follows a group of five New York City friends in their early 20s who live together in the house of one of their parents (who never seem to be home). They giggle on the subway, they scam free food, they confront sex offenders. They don’t know how to write a check, and are really still figuring out how to be grown-ups, actually. They’re broke and in so much debt that they’re contemplating starting an OnlyFans, but they hang onto their jobs by serving as their bosses’ resident youth correspondents, answering queries like: “Do kids your age give a s–t about Al Gore?”
This all feels like a mash-up of twentysomething comedies we’ve loved in the past, pairing the sexual frankness of Girls with the tight-knit nucleus of Friends. (Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s delightful Netflix comedy Crashing, with a bunch of friends living in an abandoned hospital, is another touchstone.) But the biggest influence here is the late, great Broad City, with its loopy surreal touches and its willingness to gleefully trample over any notion of good taste. (These friends walk in on each other on the toilet just to chat.) Ben Kronengold and Rebecca Shaw, who write for Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show, created the series, and they manage to capture the chaotic energy of youth, where truly anything can happen at any given moment. (Especially when you’re living in New York.)
Adults is also firmly set in The Year of Our Lord 2025, and it exposes the very weird tightrope young people have to walk today to avoid becoming a social media pariah. The struggle is real… and it’s relatable, too. As Samir (Malik Elassal) puts it, “I always thought the world was going to be waiting for me, and instead, everyone’s annoyed that I’m here.” Even if you’re not in your 20s anymore, the hurdles that Samir and his pals have to leap over just to survive are all too familiar, and that helps the show tap into something timeless.
The cast is packed with newcomers who are brimming with potential. All five lead actors are basically unknowns, and they all get a chance to shine, from Lucy Freyer’s sunny Billie to Amita Rao’s gloriously brash Issa. (Issa and Broad City’s Ilana would be instant best friends, I’m sure of it.) Owen Thiele is an early standout as Anton, the overly gregarious “friend slut” whose propensity to make friends leads to hilarious trouble in Episode 3. (He has hundreds of people he just met once saved in his phone as “Red Shirt Tall Guy” and “Psychic Shared Her Joint.”)
Even though it’s rooted in Gen Z, Adults still fits into fairly conventional sitcom rhythms and payoffs. (There are hints of a potential romance between Samir and Billie, for example, that might eventually start to bloom.) And it’s comforting in a way to see this show use those tried-and-true techniques to find big laughs within a whole new generation. There’s a notion out there that TV comedies aren’t funny anymore, or that nothing can be funny anymore, with all the perceived restrictions on what we can and can’t joke about these days. Neither one of those is true, of course —and Adults, thankfully, joyfully, proves it.
THE TVLINE BOTTOM LINE: FX’s Gen Z sitcom Adults is a welcome shot in the arm to TV comedy, with a cast of talented newcomers and a bold style that delivers huge laughs.