Review: Netflix’s SEX EDUCATION ✮✮✮✩✩

An honest and amusing romp through teenage sexuality, although highly Americanised for broader international appeal.

Dan OwenBlockedUnblockFollowFollowing

Jan 15

Netflix loved the British comedy Scrotal Recall so much they transformed it from a little-seen Channel 4 sitcom to a global hit, despite prudishly retitling it Lovesick. A similar thing happened with The End of the F***ing World (and Black Mirror, too), which should perhaps concern Channel 4 — which is becoming a proving ground for shows Netflix poaches.

Sex Education isn’t another example of this naughty business tactic, as it’s a comedy-drama Netflix ordered for themselves, but the parallels are interesting. (Daniel Ings from Lovesick even cameos in the first instalment.) Is there an “algorithm” telling Netflix people enjoy seeing half-naked English youngsters say bawdy things, perhaps because it’s not the common perception of buttoned-up Brits?

Sex Education is created by Laurie Nunn, a virtual unknown (not unlike Lovesick’s Tom Edge!) with only a handful of shorts credited on her IMDb page. It concerns Otis Milburn (Asa Butterfield), an awkward virgin living with his sex therapist mother Dr Jean Milburn (Gillian Anderson) in a beautiful English valley. Otis can’t even bring himself to masturbate (planting fake evidence of self-pleasuring so his mum doesn’t think he’s abnormal), to the amusement of his gay best friend Eric Effiong (Ncuti Gatwa).

To cut a long story short — spoilers for the early episodes! — Otis meets an outcast “bad girl” called Maeve Wiley (Emma Mackey) and they unwittingly help the headmaster’s son, hunky Adam Groff (Connor Swindells), with his embarrassing impotency problem. Maeve realises Otis has picked up invaluable insights into human sexuality thanks to his mum’s profession, which they can exploit by setting up a health clinic to help their classmates with their sex issues and questions.

There are things to love about Sex Education.

It’s an interesting setup for a comedy-drama and the first instalment does a fine job introducing all the characters. I also like the mix of newcomers and unknowns with some recognisable actors (you’ll remember Butterfield from Hugo, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, and The Space Between Us), and one global star in The X-Files’ Gillian Anderson (sharpening her English accent to a knee-quivering degree). It also looks sublime, directed by Ben Taylor with gorgeous location shots of Ross on Wye that pop in the 4K Ultra HDR presentation.

It’s funny and genuinely insightful at times, with refreshing frankness about sexual issues and nudity.

It was also interesting to learn the production hired an “intimacy coordinator” so the young actors wouldn’t feel pressured or embarrassed about pretending to have sex or masturbating on camera.

Speaking as a born and bred Englishman, my only real issue with Sex Education is its warped view of everyday life as a teenager in the UK. I left secondary school in 1995 and I know things have become more Americanised over time (Carrie-style Proms are now a part of the school calendar!), but this show feels like it was written by an American who assumed the tropes of US high school must directly translate.

There’s a scene where Otis and Eric cycle to school and some “cool kids” pull up in flashy open-top cars, with attractive girls in the back. You wouldn’t look twice at a moment like this in a Hollywood teen movie, but it seems oddly placed in a British TV show. The best example of a schoolboy’s experience in the UK remains The Inbetweeners (no matter how comically exaggerated some of it was), whereas Sex Education is attempting to splice together rude humour enjoyed by Brits with the romanticised dream of schools in America.

This may sound like a trivial issue of the show’s “vision”, particularly because Sex Education is being streamed internationally and most viewers will be assuming British schools are a more charming mirror of US high school with older buildings and quirkier accents, but it broke the spell for me.

I could just about accept the Milburn’s live in a luxurious cliffside home because of her high-paid job, but the overly Americanised school environment didn’t feel accurate. Maybe it’s intentional because foreign audiences can better grasp that popular vision of school life, no matter where they come from overseas, but I don’t like cultural homogenisation. British schools and teens have their own quirks and traditions, thank you very much, and they don’t involve exuberant dancing in assembly wearing a letter jacket after being made Head Boy. Nunn apparently wrote the series as a love letter to John Hughes’s The Breakfast Club (1985), but I think it could have been handled more authentically for its time and place. This does explain why the fashions seem inspired more by the 1980s and ’90s than the 21st-century, too.

Will I watch more?

Maybe, but there are better things higher on my list. It was certainly entertaining and I enjoyed the performances. I even chuckled a fair number of times, and it already feels like there are some fresh “breakout stars” in the making with the likes of Gatwa, Mackey, and Swindells. But it did seem to drag a little, which is never a good sign, perhaps suggesting this may have been better devised as a half-hour format. Still, it’s stylishly shot, well acted by attractive young people, and has something valuable to say about sexual health and the messiness of adolescent relationships and hormonally-charged emotions. I’d have preferred something a touch more genuine in terms of the English school setting and behaviour of some characters, but I daresay this would be a must-see if I was 16-years-old again.