So we went ahead and binge-watched both seasons of ‘Sex Education’ in about five days
At first glance Netflix’s Sex Education tries way too hard. It calls every two hours or so even though you’re ignoring its heat, then texts you its bewilderment in all caps. It makes grand gestures in public, even though you’ve made plainly clear that sort of thing embarrasses you. Nevertheless, you come round to it in the end. Because Sex Education seems to have roughly the same taste in music as you, is every now and then nostalgic for the early 90s, and is (ugh) unbearably adorable.
All the kids attending Moordale Secondary School in the English countryside are proper assholes, and yet totally respectful of one another’s differences - especially when trauma requires them to be. Otis Milburn, portrayed by the babyfaced Asa Butterfield, charges them all for sex advice after he helps the school bully get over a (ah) performance issue. We learn soon enough that everyone in school is having sex: riotous, public, awfully grown-up sex. I hate when romantic comedies categorise folks as either geeks or hotties, so this show’s democracy of awkwardness is more than welcome. You’re coaxed into a weekend binge because you want to cringe as some besotted teenager comes clean about some bedroom malfunction; you want to fist-pump the air too, when they finally get a crush to hold their hand. Sex Education is really good at threading together the nuances of romantic comedy, of which I happen to be a connoisseur.
I was equally sceptical of the fact that Otis is coaxed early in season 1 into opening a mobile sex-ed clinic, by the foxy (and inconceivably worldly) Maeve. Maeve wears faux leather, smokes in between classes, and can have casual sex with whomever she pleases - but she also does her homework and can craft a hell of an essay. Their unlikely business partnership inevitably leads to a romantic imbalance in which Otis will pine secretly after Maeve, only for Maeve to pine secretly after Otis when he hooks up with someone else.
The idea of a young pupil counselling schoolmates for money feels airlifted from 2007’s Charlie Bartlett, in which the late Anton Yelchin delivers mental health services to his peers and even prescribes medication. Otis doesn’t go nearly that far, but he does have a troubled background to help you empathise. As a child he walked in on his old man philandering. His mother, a sex psychiatrist (go figure!), blatantly psychoanalyses him at the breakfast table. Everything about the plot is lined up so that you can focus on feeling warm and fuzzy inside when the moment asks you to.
By the time you get to season 2, as I've done rather quickly, seemingly overused emotional props become loveable character traits. The histrionics of Otis’ black and gay best friend Eric, or Otis’ classic self-sabotage, or just the way sex occasions itself, as quickly as a handshake … you start to count on the reliability of these things, as well as the eerie glow of light that the show masquerades as having leapt over the hills. You will have long since begun to admire the way the show cashes all of its tolerance and diversity cheques, exploring sexuality and gender politics with a care and compassion a traditional rom-com never could. This is perhaps why television is now considered the ideal playground for screenwriters that want to innovate in the discipline of character.
It perhaps also helps that Sex Education is quietly, quaintly British, and doesn’t mind occasionally sounding - and looking - like its parents. It’s blissfully free of Internet speak, and Internet culture, and might for a time save us all from ourselves.
