It took continuing acclaim,
and over-the-top reviews for its second season, to induce me to watch the hormonal
high-school comedy-drama Sex Education (MC-80, NFX). Last year I dismissed it as giggly raunch after
a 15-minute sampling, but this year I happily binged all sixteen hour-long
episodes. And now I’m prepared to put it
in a class with Freaks & Geeks, high praise indeed.
Asa Butterfield and Gillian
Anderson lead a brilliant cast of newcomers and mostly unfamiliar faces. He’s a 16-year old with a lot of sexual and
social anxieties, but comprehensive knowledge derived from his sex therapist
parents. She’s his divorced – and
altogether too candid and straight-talking – mother. He’s got a gay African best friend (Ncuti
Gatwa), and a bad-girl/bright-student mentor (Emma Mackey) who enlists him in a
business scheme of selling sex advice to fellow students (both well-played by
first-timers). Laurie Nunn is the show’s
thirtysomething creator, with half the episodes directed by Ben Taylor of Catastrophe,
complemented by three female directors, with a host of writers contributing
authentic storylines.
This is a British show with a
decidedly American vibe, taking inspiration from John Hughes films, Fast
Times at Ridgemont High, and other teen sex comedies. Purposefully adrift in time and location, the
series was actually shot in a bucolic area of Wales
The show is funny, but full
of honest feeling (and solid sex advice), so the raunchy giggles are
well-earned by genuine characterizations and storylines, with on-the-nose but
enjoyable music cues. In its sustained
amplitude, this series surpasses a previous favorite of mine that shares some
of the same dynamic, The End of the F***ing World. Really, this one is likely to exceed your
expectations much as it did mine.
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