Sex Education: The Education We Need

When people first hear the phrase Sex Education, two images are likely to come to mind. Somewhere in the deep foggy past, the first image will be about personal health classes, where a teacher awkwardly shows the class how to put a condom on a banana. However, recently, that memory that we have tried to bury deep down has been shared with a witty British Netflix drama.
Sex Education follows a simple enough premise: socially awkward teen Otis Milburn, played by Asa Butterfield, teams up with outcast Maeve Wiley, played by Emma Mackey, to run a sex clinic, using second-hand knowledge from Otis’ sex/relationship therapist mother, played by Gillian Anderson. Sounds like the kind of smut that would fit in right alongside something like The Inbetweeners, right? Well, not quite.

While the idea of British coming-of-age stories might bring up preconceived notions of sarcastic dialogue and witticisms galore (don’t worry, there’s plenty of that in this show too), Sex Education covers a lot of issues that most shows would either shrink away from, neglect altogether or use as the punchline for a joke, and it goes through a lot, so buckle up.

With a name like Sex Education, there’s obviously some aspects that are share a link with that phrase, like sexual orientation. For example, Otis’ best friend Eric, played by Ncuti Gatwa, is gay. He’s not the only character, as there are some who are proud of their sexuality and others who hide it, with Eric falling somewhere in the middle. Once upon a time, homosexuality might have been played up for jokes. However, here, it is used to contribute to interesting subplots. For Eric and some other characters, being gay and struggling with the backlash from their peers/ their own self identity makes for brilliant character arcs which get concluded in satisfying and at times, all too relatable ways.

While in the same vein, there are also other issues that the show talks about quite well. In the first season, one of the main characters ends up getting pregnant. This is a conflict that takes up a good portion of one of the earlier episodes, and this is a rather daring move: there are a lot of shows which wouldn’t touch the topic of abortion with a ten foot pole, and the show unleashes this on the audience in the second episode. It tells the audience “see this character you’re supposed to fall in love with but have had barely time to meet? Well, here’s a bombshell for you.”

It takes the audience on a journey all throughout the character’s torment, from the apprehensive fears of potentially being pregnant, the shock of discovering the truth, the decision to terminate the pregnancy, and even the backlash some groups have to her choice. It leaves the audience just as shocked and discombobulated as the character is, and this is a very clever form of writing to throw the audience into the deep end along with the protagonist. It also tells the audience very early on that the show is not shy about issues typically considered taboo.

The second season stacks up equally well to its predecessor and builds on investigating uncomfortable realities, like the introduction of a character arc involving a child’s mother struggling with substance addiction. Through well-planned writing, the second season follows in the first’s footsteps, regularly including elements that shine a light on taboo subjects. On the one hand, it develops the character and provides for dramatised subplots. On the other, slightly more subtle hand, it lets the audience see the uncomfortable reality that some young people really are dealing with every day of their lives.

There is a particularly brilliant plot arc which emulates another masterpiece of teenage drama: here, a group of girls are locked up in detention, shot in a similar way to the 1985 comedy-drama The Breakfast Club. Show creator Laurie Nunn herself has described the aesthetic of the show as being strongly inspired by John Hughes’ movies of the 1980s, The Breakfast Club among them. However, that film has an hour and forty minutes to talk about teen self-identity. This particular episode takes the much more daring tack that the girls are all connected via forms of sexual harassment they’ve experienced, and it doesn’t take an hour to talk about it either. It also isn’t afraid to put the comedy in the show aside to focus on the intense drama. It’s a truly moving and shocking thing to witness, especially watching it from a male viewpoint and seeing all these characters talk about their personal trauma so casually amongst themselves.

Additionally, none of the characters in this show are cardboard cutouts. Sure, at first, the audience might see the stereotypical bully, the hot girl, the goth that avoids people. Yet, instead of playing on these stereotypes and leaving them just as that, the show goes deeper than that and reveals their motivations for being the way they are. These can range from having a particularly aggressive guardian figure or having no guardian figure at all. Basically, the show doesn’t make the mistake of letting its characters fade into the background, and instead lets almost all of them have comprehensive story arcs which fit perfectly into the grander overall scale of the show’s plot.

Behind all the comedic elements and clever writing lies a beautiful series that talks about the issues that coming of age brings, issues of self-identity, being raised by addicts, sexuality, sexual assault, pregnancy scares. But that is one of the beautiful elements of comedy: why cry about it when you can laugh about it? Indeed, one of the biggest strengths of the show is knowing when to write comedy around the points of drama, creating a nice balance between not being too cheesy or too depressing. And major kudos to the creator Laurie Nunn: through careful planning and writing, she hits the nail on the head in this amazing Netflix Original, masterfully connecting with the show’s target audience.