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What would you do if your 52-year-old best friend started dating your 26-year-old daughter?

That's the deliciously uncomfortable conundrum at the heart of Disney+'s new series Alice and Steve, which critics are calling an "outrageously witty wrong-com."

It's an intoxicating train wreck; I devoured all six episodes in a single weekend, completely hooked by the sharp, hilarious British comedy, and the discomfort.

Nicola Walker stars as Alice, a chaotic, impulsive clothing designer. Her stable life is anchored by her second husband, Daniel (a wonderfully exhausted Joel Fry), the man who raised her daughter, Izzy (Yali Topol Margalith).

Watch: Alice and Steve Official Trailer Disney+. Post continues below.

Opposite her is Flight of the Conchords star Jemaine Clement, who plays her best friend of over 30 years, Steve. Bringing his signature, weaponised deadpan to the role, his character is a celebrity hairstylist caught between a new romance and an exploding friendship.

Alice and Steve have been inseparable for decades. But the show drops an early, massive bomb: they actually used to date way back when.

The former lovers turned platonic soulmates have built a bond that is fiercely possessive.

But the status quo shatters when Steve and Alice's daughter Izzy's longstanding "family friendship" dynamic crosses into something neither of them planned, and they start dating.

The story beautifully taps into a terrifying milestone every parent eventually faces: the reality that our adult children will form relationships we cannot control, and potentially get hurt.

My mum talks to me about this a lot. Having watched two of her daughters navigate a divorce, she always says the pain you feel for your children doesn't stop when they become adults; in fact, it's harder because the stakes are so much higher.

It was interesting to watch this from the perspective of a parent with an adult "child." It gave me more empathy for what my own mum has witnessed over the last 20 years raising adult daughters.

We go from baby-proofing sharp corners with foam to non-negotiables like wearing a helmet. And then one day, the dangers are ones no foam or helmet can prevent.

It made me wonder, when the time comes, how do I let my own sons fall? It's the same impossible question Alice faces.

Because if you don't support them, you risk pushing them away. A dilemma that manifests in the show as dark, petty sabotage.

Alice weaponises everything from Steve's hatred of recycling to his love for Woody Allen (a director Gen Z has long since cancelled), just to make him look like a dinosaur in front of Izzy's friends.

But if we don't impart our wisdom when we see them heading towards an avalanche, is it just a case of "it's their lesson to learn"?

Where do we draw the line?

While the internet's reaction fought over the age gap, the real gut-punch lay in a comment I kept seeing online: "It's not the age gap, it's that he watched her grow up."

And that, for me, is where the true 'ick' lies. Steve was trampling over decades of shared family history. And the hard-to-ignore fact that he knew Izzy when she was a baby.

It doesn't just cross a line; it enters a whole new territory of generational cringe.

To use the blunt internet slang term, it officially turns a mother and daughter into "tunnel sisters" (women who have shared the same sexual partner).

Yet even still, as a viewer, I found myself switching loyalties between 'Team Alice' and 'Team Steve and Izzy'.

Because once you strip away the 'ick-factor', their age-gap relationship actually looks healthy, romantic, and genuinely loving.

From the sharp mind of writer Sophie Goodhart, who cut her teeth on Sex Education, the show brims with British comedy DNA, where every character is deeply flawed.

You could not brand anyone a simple villain.

But when applying the parental litmus test, if one of my girlfriends started dating my son in 12 years, how would I feel?

With that lens, it is absolutely not okay. To me, that feels like the ultimate violation of an unspoken friendship boundary.

Watching Alice completely spiral and resort to desperate sabotage hits an incredibly raw nerve.

It's that existential midlife transition period: her youth is eclipsed by her daughter, her marriage hits a wall, and her control over life completely evaporates.

She doesn't just fight for loyalty; she wages a war of mutual destruction that leaves her career in ashes and pushes her marriage into murky territory. The tragedy of Alice's crusade is that, in her desperation to "protect" her adult daughter's life, she completely blows up her own.

Behind the dark, awkward comedy is a profoundly painful reality: the fear of losing your child and your best friend at once.

Alice and Steve isn't just an uncomfortable romance; it's a brilliant, polarising look at jealousy, grief, and what happens when the people we trust most redraw the lines of family loyalty.

It also asks the question no parent is ever truly prepared to answer: when do we stop catching them, and let them fall?

Feature Image: Disney+

The painful parenting reality hiding beneath hit new comedy 'Alice and Steve'.

Annaliese Todd