It’s rare to see older men displaying their flaws on screen – it’s women who get all the scrutiny

No one writes articles about them – about how they feel, what they should wear and whether they should have their ear hair lasered or their noses waxed, writes Jenny Eclair

Michael Douglas and Alan Arkin display a deep friendship in ‘The Kominsky Method’ that’s normally reserved for female roles (Michael Yarish/Netflix)

No one really thinks about older men – they’re just there, aren’t they? In the background, being slightly annoying, holding the queue up in the supermarket, coming home with the “wrong tomatoes”.

No one writes articles about them – about how they feel, what they should wear and whether they should have their ear hair lasered, or their noses waxed. They don’t have any buzzwords to describe them – they’re not peri-menopausal, menopausal or post-menopausal, they’re just “older men”: not “old-old”, not shuffling ever closer to death; just older than we can really be bothered with.

Some might be retired, some are powerful and some never made it – but emotionally, they are a complete mystery.