Sex Education, Netflix review - an addictive teen comedy drama with empathy, wisdom - and a hip soundtrack
Few TV series are as likely to cause such a stir this year as Sex Education. This addictive new comedy drama from Laurie Nunn which was written as a love letter to those American High School movies such as John Hughes’s The Breakfast Club.
Be warned – with sex both shown and discussed in graphic detail, the series is not suitable for younger teenagers. The programme makers hired an "intimacy coordinator" in order to make the young cast (several barely out of their teens) feel safe as regards the many explicit scenes. However, Sex Education is no prurient exercise but a highly responsible piece of television that does a terrific job of facing teen fears with reassuring honesty and tension-busting wit. The result is a near masterpiece.
The series (which is now available to stream in its entirety on Netflix) stars the disconcertingly blue-eyed Asa Butterfield as 16-year-old Otis Milburn, the intensely clever and deeply repressed son of an outrageously unboundaried, man-eating sex therapist, Jean (Gillian Anderson). Clearly having a ball with the role, Anderson relishes rolling every excruciatingly frank, English syllable around her mouth. Arching her back in a series of sophisticated silks, she casually enquires after her child’s masturbatory habits over breakfast.
Otis’s aim is to fly beneath everyone’s radar, but when his classmates realise he’s a walking encyclopaedia of human sexuality, they begin bringing their problems to him. Smart, sultry punk Maeve (Emma Mackey) seizes the opportunity to monetise his “gift” and become his agent. Soon the “weird sex kid who looks like a Victorian ghost” is dropping pearls of wisdom on everything from viagra and STDs to fellatio, body shaming and abortion.
Despite the fact that the concept of a nerdy, uptight virgin dispensing intimate advice to his infinitely cooler and more experienced peers is clearly very funny, the show’s power lies in the seriousness, empathy and wisdom that Otis brings to each encounter. When a newly out lesbian couple come to him with questions about the mechanics of gay love, he looks deeper into their relationship to find the emotional mismatch. Another character accepts she’s not ready for sex yet and is given permission to wait.
Butterfield, 21, who made his name in The Boy in Striped Pyjamas, is compellingly credible in the strange role, pin-balling between his preternaturally mature therapist persona and his panic-stricken, squeaky voiced teen self. He may be an expert in other people’s love lives, but he’s a mess when it comes to his crush on Maeve.
It’s down to Otis’s best friend Eric (Ncuti Gatwa, celebrating high camp with infectious enthusiasm) to deliver the home truths our hero needs to hear. And here lies another of Sex Education’s strengths. It’s wonderful (and rare) to find a drama which properly explores friendship between young men. The deep love and trust between straight Otis and gay Eric lie at the heart of a show and allows its characters to embrace layers of complexity that take them in some unexpected directions across the series.
Another notable aspect of Sex Education is that it is set in a weird cross-cultural universe in which the classic tropes of the US teen genre – bombastic Eighties pop, bullies pounding the metal lockers, jocks dating mean girls – are played off against a cheekily down-to-earth British script (it was filmed in Wales) which sees kids eating Curly Wurlys.
Ultimately, this is a show with an unexpectedly wide appeal. Twenty-first-century teenagers are going to find real comfort and companionship in these characters, while those of us old enough to have seen those John Hughes movies at the cinema will wish Sex Education had been there for us. Life moves pretty fast, hey?
