The Reality of Aging in Movies and TV

Recently, Hubby and I watched a couple of entertaining movies on Netflix – The Thursday Murder Club and Moving On.

The Thursday Murder Club stars Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Ben Kingsley, and Celia Imrie as residents in a very nice assisted living facility in England who try to solve cold cases. When a development company threatens to shut down the facility and kick everyone out, they protest and someone is murdered in their midst. Then they set about solving the murder.

Moving On stars Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, who were recently the stars in the Netflix series Grace and Frankie, along with Martin Sheen and Sam Waterston. In Moving on, Jane Fonda’s character wants to settle some unfinished business with the widower of a friend who has just passed away.

In all of these recent shows, it has been fascinating to see the reality of aging in the stories’ characters. One character in Moving On mentions having to take his statin. Helen Mirren’s character has a husband with dementia in The Thursday Murder Club. That the story takes place in an assisted living facility is a key part of the story. Grace and Frankie covered myriad issues related to aging.

I sense that this is a fairly recent development in movies and television, say, within the past 15-20 years. Although, maybe I’m noticing this more because I am experiencing the realities of aging myself.

If I think back to movies and TV shows from the 1980s and 1990s, there were older actors, but they didn’t seem to be as affected by the physical and psychological realities of aging. If they were, they didn’t typically show it or talk about it as part of the story.

Male actors, such as Sean Connery, who starred in action movies when younger (think James Bond), continued in action movies when they were much older (like The Hunt for Red October) and seemed to spring back almost instantly from on-screen thrashings. In an earlier era, sexism in Hollywood allowed male actors to work far longer as they aged, whereas female actors had to fight stereotypes about beauty and aging to continue working past middle age.

Angela Lansbury managed this, playing 60-something Jessica Fletcher in the TV series Murder, She Wrote. If memory serves, she solved murders without dwelling much on aging. Behind the scenes, however, there is an unverified rumor that she often cast aging actors in the series so they could earn points to remain in the union. Actors were certainly feeling the effects of aging, even if they weren’t being discussed on-screen.

That’s what makes the current crop of movies and TV shows so refreshing. They more accurately reflect the realities of aging and also allow both female and male actors to continue working well into their later years. (Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin are both in their eighties.) Audiences, especially those of us who are middle aged and beyond, have an opportunity to see our experiences in popular culture and realize we are not alone in what we are going through.

Hubby and I are always looking for someone interesting to watch. Have you seen any good TV shows or movies that accurately reflect the realities of aging? Let me know in the comments.