What a soulless Sex Education

NETFLIX’S hit series Sex Education, starring Gillian Anderson as a sex therapist, has just been commissioned for a second series.

If you don’t have teenage children, this show may well have passed you by. But to anyone under the age of 18, it is the hottest thing on our screens at the moment.

In many ways, the plaudits are deserved. The writing is sharp and funny, with plenty of clever references for older heads (Spartacus and Cyrano de Bergerac, to name but two) and the cast are impressive. There’s just one thing that spoils it: the sex.

It’s not so much the frequency or graphic nature — after all, the clue’s in the title. It’s the entirely perfunctory nature of it. The way the act is divested entirely of all emotional meaning, and reduced to a purely physical function, rather like blowing one’s nose or going for a run.

I can’t help feeling this truly is the legacy of a generation that’s grown up watching porn on the internet. Sex that is coldly and baldly anatomical, without a shred of emotional connection. Slick and stylish, I’ll grant you. But soulless, utterly transactional — and so lacking in joy it makes you wonder why anyone would bother.