Why the best TV characters are Gen X

Women over 50 make up 20 percent of the general US population, but only eight percent of on-screen characters on US TV reflect this group, according to a report last year by Nielsen. Those who are on screen find themselves stuck mainly in motherly roles, according to the report: “Women 50+ rarely see themselves in content, and when they do, they often find a reflection of a woman that doesn’t match their multi-faceted relevance, or reality.”

We’ve experienced bursts of truly magnificent senior characters of late, from the two leads in Netflix’s Grace and Frankie – both Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin are in their 80s – to Jean Smart, 70, as Vegas comedian Deborah Vance in HBO comedy Hacks. It’s inspiring to see these masters ply their craft in funny, meaty roles, the likes of which we’ve rarely seen before for older women on television. But there’s also a gulf of unexplored territory between the 30-somethings looking for love and success on the vast majority of shows, and retirement age. It’s a time loaded with dramatic possibility for female characters: divorce, career shifts, disillusionment, parenting, caring for parents, health problems and menopause, yes; but also romance and sex from a wiser perspective, the challenges and beauty of long-term love, and the freedom that comes from letting go of the people-pleasing and rat-racing ways of youth.

If you scan the broader landscape of television, you’ll see that female characters in this age group are vastly under-represented, but often wonderful when they do show up. Kristin Scott Thomas, as a powerful female executive, giving a bracingly honest – yet strangely hopeful – monologue about menopause on the Emmy-winning BBC/Amazon hit Fleabag was just the beginning. Three more recent series demonstrate the great stories that can be told through midlife women. There is Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu as the cutting, glamorous marketing-agency boss Sylvie Grateau on Netflix’s Emily in Paris. There is Pamela Adlon as the struggling, but wise and honest, single mother Sam Fox on FX’s Better Things. And then there is Bridgett Everett as the grieving Midwesterner Sam Miller, who begins to find her way when she rediscovers her passion for singing, on HBO’s Somebody Somewhere.

Midlife women are, in fact, the best characters on TV right now – flawed but powerful, sexy and well aware of their best attributes, as well as their limitations. With Somebody Somewhere recently wrapping a well-received first season and renewed for a second, and with Better Things underway on its fifth season, it’s clear that it’s time to centre – and celebrate – them far more than we have, and to tell their too-little-told stories.

Stealing the show

There’s no better example of a midlife character who deserves her own show – but is stuck serving the narrative of a particularly vapid 30-something – than Sylvie of Emily in Paris. The title makes it obvious that Emily, an American whose marketing job transfers her to France, is the one we’re supposed to focus on. But Sylvie, her boss at the marketing firm, steals the show. Played by 58-year-old Leroy-Beaulieu, Sylvie is stunning and glamorous, always wearing fitted designer clothing – not to mention the occasional bikini.

But Sylvie also unapologetically owns her age and experience. She juggles lovers of various ages, and knows her business well. Most notably, she’s one of the few characters who are unfazed by Emily’s innocent-American act: “Look, you come to Paris, you walk into my office, you don’t even bother to learn the language,” she says to Emily, voicing many sceptical viewers’ thoughts. “You treat the city like it’s your amusement park, and after a year of food, sex, wine and maybe some culture, you’ll go back from where you came. So, perhaps we’ll work together. But no, we won’t be friends.”

Better Things, on the other hand, is one of the few shows that, less glamorously, has centred a woman in midlife and her everyday concerns: raising three daughters and making a living as a single mother. Adlon co-created the series and stars as Sam, a character who hews particularly close to her own life as a mid-level actress and parent. She cares for her ageing mother, parents beautifully – if imperfectly – and occasionally dates. Adlon’s depiction of this era in a woman’s life is refreshingly grounded, honest and specific: She fights viciously with her eldest daughter, in particular, at times. She’s not sure how to handle her headstrong mother’s signs of mental decline. She wishes for an end to her periods but brags to her friends when her gynaecologist tells her she has the reproductive organs of a teenager.

Somebody Somewhere is another rare show focused on a midlife woman – and, in this case, it offers a unique depiction of a single, childfree 49-year-old trying to regain her footing after the death of her sister. Everett’s Sam isn’t trying to flee her small Kansas hometown, and isn’t actively seeking love or success. But she is trying to find joy after a devastating loss, and she begins to find it in small ways, by rediscovering her gift for singing and connecting with an old high-school classmate who makes the perfect best friend. She is inspiring in very different ways from the women of Emily in Paris and Better Things, rousing us with her small moments of vulnerability, made all the more poignant by her stage in life.

At one point in Emily in Paris, Sylvie offers the title character some wise advice about her time in Paris: “Emily, you’ve got the rest of your life to be as dull as you wish,” she says, “but while you’re here, fall in love, make mistakes, leave a disastrous trip in your wake”. But Sylvie and her middle-aged cohorts have already made their youthful mistakes, and they’re anything but dull for it. That’s what makes them even more fun to watch than the overabundance of Emilys on television, and why we need more Sylvies and Sams instead.

Series five of Better Things is airing weekly on FX in the US, and series one to four are on BBC iPlayer in the UK; Somebody Somewhere is available on HBO Max in the US, and Sky Comedy and NOW TV in the UK.

Love film and TV? Join BBC Culture Film and TV Club on Facebook, a community for cinephiles all over the world.

If you would like to comment on this story or anything else you have seen on BBC Culture, head over to our Facebook page or message us on Twitter.