Why is there such a buzz about..?

A Teacher ( iPlayer)

Claire Wilson (Kate Mara, right) is the pretty new English teacher at Westerbrook High School in Austin, Texas. She’s ‘too hot to be a teacher’, in the view of one of the school’s jocks.

We know something is up with her because we see her shoplift a lipstick within the first few minutes. One of her students, 17-year-old Eric (Nick Robinson), is trying to improve his grades so he can study medicine. He persuades Ms Wilson, 32, to give him some extra tuition. He’s juggling schoolwork with a job and caring for his younger brothers. She’s in an unhappy marriage. He admires her passion for her subject (she’s a big Dylan Thomas fan). She likes the fact that he wants to be a doctor.

There’s clearly a physical attraction. Before you can say ‘Don’t stand so close to me’, they are having a torrid and, obviously, deeply inappropriate sexual relationship that will have lifechanging consequences for both of them. First-class performances from Mara and Robinson and a clever script mean that although Claire is the predatory abuser, we are not entirely without sympathy for her, and although Eric is the victim, we question his decisions.

‘Some people are definitely going to feel uncomfortable watching,’ Mara has said. ‘It wasn’t something that we made thinking it would be a super-easy watch.’ The series has prompted a lot of discussion about the nature of grooming, and the ending, set ten years after Claire and Eric’s affair, has proved highly divisive.