Unabashed ‘Sex Education’
No blushing in Netflix’s Brit comedy. Review,
Perhaps the British accents make being honest about teen sex just a bit less awkward.
Netflix’s latest comedy from across the pond, “Sex Education” (streaming Friday, ★★★☆) manages to be one of the smartest and most authentic TV depictions of sex and relationships among high-schoolers. The clever and heartfelt dramedy is unabashed as it chronicles the drama – sexual, social familial – facing a group of teens, mostly from the perspective of Otis Milburn (Asa Butterfield), who, as the son of accomplished sex therapist Jean (Gillian Anderson), uses what he has learned from his mother to help (and profit from) his classmates.
It’s a weird, potentially offensive concept that explores not just sex but all the things teenagers are afraid to talk about or are ashamed of. Otis doesn’t hand out Kama Sutra manuals or make crude jokes; he asks his classmates deeper questions about their mental and emotional health. The series’ theme lies in a fundamental truth about teenagers that’s hard to put into practice: They just want someone to listen to them.
Like “Skins” but with a bigger heart, “Sex” applies a dry English wit to its subjects and assembles a large cast of diverse teens with different problems and responsibilities.
Otis, despite being able to talk the talk with his peers, is inexperienced and sexually frustrated, and Jean’s boundary-pushing parenting style doesn’t help.
His “business partner” Maeve (Emma Mackey, a star in the making) is a social outcast secretly trysting with the most popular boy in school (Kedar Williams-Stirling) while living without her perpetually absent parents in a trailer park. Otis’s best friend Eric (Ncuti Gatwa) is enthusiastic to a fault, attempting to fit into the clique-y environment and woo the only other out gay boy in the school, without success.
In general, the teen characters veer dangerously close to stereotypes, from Eric as a flamboyant gay best friend to a horny band nerd to a star student-athlete under immense parental pressure. But the young actors are so charming, it hardly seems to matter. As the episodes progress, stereotypes give way to deeply formed characters who surprise with how mature they really are. Otis’s “clients” reveal more depth than the vapid teens they initially seem.
Adding a bit of gravitas, an excellent sense of style and an adult perspective on sex is Anderson, a casting coup. “The X-Files” star glides around her woodland retreat, playfully delivering lines like “What is your first memory of your scrotum?” At first she seems like the typical oversexed “cool mom,” but her own insecurities about parenthood eventually surface.
“Sex” is not for everyone (pun intended), but if you’re game for explicit scenes and dialogue and appreciate English wit, it’s a cheerfully hilarious (but safely distant) return to puberty. If any series can make adult viewers appreciate getting past that life stage, it’s this one.