Sex Education.
Created by Laurie Nunn, starring Asa Butterfield, Gillian Anderson, Emma Mackey, Ncuti Gatwa, Connor Swindells, Aimee-Lou Wood.
Chances are you’ve seen the ads on Netflix. But if you haven’t started watching the Sex Education, start. This charming, funny, heartwarming show is set in England and follows socially awkward Otis Milburn as he navigates a high school world in which, as his best friend Eric astutely asserts, “Everybody’s either thinking about shagging, about to shag, or actually shagging.” Otis lives with his mother Jean (Anderson), a sex therapist whose very open stance on sex has given him a wealth of theoretical knowledge. Even though he is still a virgin, he unwittingly becomes an expert on the subject. When he teams up with the smartest (and baddest) girl Maeve to set up an underground sex therapy clinic, his knowledge becomes ever helpful to students who are dealing with a host of sexual problems.
I’ve seen all three seasons (a 4th is in the works) and as soon as I finished the last episode, I started over again. This is not something I typically do, but this show is so incredibly rich in character and character growth, that I wanted to relive how that growth happened. Admittedly, I’m a sucker for the next coming-of-age story, but this show is the most honest one I’ve ever seen. No one is airbrushed, no one is model perfect, the sex scenes are definitely not choreographed in any beautiful way. No subject seems too difficult to tackle. And the education in the title does not just refer to sex. Helping his fellow teens with sex problems is how the show starts but it becomes so much more. We get very real conversations about lesbian, gay and non-binary relationships, masturbation, pressures teens feel about having sexual relationships, and more. But what sets this show apart from others even further is its focus on multiple characters and emotional trauma and growth. In season one alone, we establish that Adam has a difficult relationship with his father, Jackson is stifled by one of his mother’s (yes, he has two) ambitions for him, Maeve’s parents are literally absent and have left her to live alone in a trailer park, and Otis has a close relationship with his mother but it is one that even he has to escape from time to time in order to establish independence. The parents in this show are not side characters but an integral part of the plot movement. Their relationships with their children are so honest that it at times feels that the creators have been listening in on our own conversations. And parents in the show have sex too (shocker). The education of sex and emotional growth applies to them as well.
If you don’t mind gritty, honest stories, jump in with this. It may embarrass your kids and you to watch it together – that’s up to you. But I daresay it does a better job than school at teaching incredibly important issues.
Available now on Netflix.
