By Neil Fletcher
If you haven’t yet cottoned on to Sex Education, the British comedy-drama recently released its third season on Netflix, you are missing a real treat.
Set in the leafy fictional down of Moordale (and shot in and around Ross on Wye, Wales). The show follows the lives of the students, staff and parents of the fictitious Moordale Secondary School as they contend with various personal dilemmas, often related to sexual intimacy. It features an ensemble cast that includes Asa Butterfield, Gillian Anderson, Ncuti Gatwa, Emma Mackey, Connor Swindells and Kedar Williams-Stirling.
The show has (quite rightly, IMHO) has received critical acclaim, with particular praise for its ensemble cast, writing, directing, production values, and mature treatment of its themes. The series has been a viewership success, with over 40 million viewers streaming the first series after its debut.
The show centers on the will-they-won’t they stuttering romance between the nerdy, kind and empathetic Otis Milburn (Butterfield) and the troubled but fundamentally decent Maeve Riley (Emma Mackey). The pair start up a sex therapy clinic in the school, initially to make money but thereafter because of the huge demand among their fellow students – and because the pair can’t keep away from each other.
Otis begins the series ambivalent about sex, in part because his single mother Jean (Gillian AndersoN) is a sex therapist who frequently has affairs with male suitors but is unable to maintain romantic relationships.
Other students at Moordale include Eric Effiong, Otis’ best friend and the gay son of Ghanaian-Nigerian immigrants; Adam Groff, the headmaster’s son who develops a bullying nature out of his own self-loathing, Jackson Marchetti, the head boy struggling to meet the high expectations set for him; Ruby Matthews, Anwar Bakshi and Olivia Hanan, members of a popular clique known as “The Untouchables”; and Aimee Gibbs, an Untouchable who secretly befriends Maeve; and Lily Iglehart, an eccentric girl determined to lose her virginity. The school is later joined by Ola Nyman, whose widowed father Jakob begins a relationship with Jean.
The teen coming-of-age genre is a beloved staple of TV, and yet Sex Education spins its own super-intelligent slant on growing up by showing how millennials are changing their attitudes to sex, sexuality and relationships, beyond the comprehension their parents. The show develops in tone and depth beyond its initial easy comic setup; at its heart is the notion that the problems, frustrations and disappointments of teenagers are as real and valid as those of the so-called grown-ups.
The story arc of Otis and Maeve could easily run out of steam by halfway through the one series, but thanks to a painstaking examination of numerous subplots and supporting characters, this show kept me enthralled while I binge watched all three seasons last month.
Netflix have announced a Season Four of the show is in the works, and we can’t wait. But we will have to, probably till this time next year.
Sigh…
