SEX EDUCATION – SEASON ONE
Created by Laurie Nunn
Directed by Kate Herron (4 episodes) and Ben Taylor (4 episodes)
Eric, Maeve & Otis
CAST:
Asa Butterfield – Otis Milburn,a 16 year old virginal boy who lives with his sex therapist mum
Gillian Anderson – Dr Jean Milburn, sex therapist
Emma Mackey- Maeve,the alpha female bad girl at the school. She is tough, has a reputation and lives alone in a trailer park.
Ncuti Gatwa – Eric, Otis’s best friend. Eric is gay and has a Christian family with lots of sisters.
Connor Swindells- Adam Groff,the head teacher’s son who is the school bully.
Kedar Wiliams-Stirling – Jackson, the head boy, sports star and pursuing Maeve.
Alistair Petrie – Mr Groff, head teacher, Adam’s dad
Aimee Lou Wood – Aimee, Maeve’s friend. Popular. Sexy. Not bright. Lives in a mansion.
Tanya Reynolds – Lily, a girl determined to have sex soon. She draws erotic comic books with aliens.
Mime Keene – Ruby a popular girl, and a mean girl
Mikael Persbrandt – Jakob, a beefy Swedish handyman
Patricia Allison – Ola, Jakob’s daughter. Friendly to Otis.
Edward Bluemel – Sean, Maeve’s brother (episodes 6 to 8)
Chaneil Kular- Anwar leader of a popular “cool” group “The Untouchables” and gay.
Simone Ashley- Olivia an “Untouchabe” and Otis and Maeve’s first client
Jim Howick – Mr Hendricks, science teacher and conductor of The Swing Band
James Purefoy – Remi Milburn, Otis’s dad. Only on Facetime from the USA.
Plus lots and lots of others
I know it’s early but if there’s a better, sweeter, punchier comedy this year then, for sure, 2019 is on Viagra too.
Lucy Mangan: The Guardian
Netflix is on a roll. Two original straight-to-TV films, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs and Roma are up for major awards this year, and Sex Education opens 2019 to wide acclaim.
Series One consists of eight one hour episodes. It’s particularly hard to maintain straight sitcom for more than 30 minutes,or any comedy for that matter, and one of the show’s achievements is having enough narrative in each episode to sustain the time frame … you need multiple story lines. There is a huge cast and all production values are full feature film.
Ten minutes into the first episode, Series One, Episode One we thought it was Parker Lewis Can’t Lose with the addition of Game of Thrones bonking count. That doesn’t do it justice. Episode One starts with Aimee stark naked riding on top of the school bully, Adam. Incidentally, if you look at sex scenes in any film or TV show in the last few years, you’d be forgiven for thinking the most frequent sexual position was girl athletically on top, closely followed by girl sitting on a table, man standing and that the missionary position didn’t exist (it’s all about camera angles). It’s an attention grabbing start, but that’s not what it’s about.
Otis (Asa Butterfield) and his mum Dr Jean Milburn (Gillian Anderson)
Briefly, Otis is a sixteen year old virgin who is in the acutely embarrassing position of living with his sex therapist mum, Dr Jean Milburn. His best friend is Eric, who is gay and comes from a devout Christian Afro-Caribbean family. The co-lead with Otis is Maeve, the toughest girl in the school. She is also the most academically-gifted and lives alone in a trailer park.
Eric (Ncuti Gatwa)and Otis (Asa Butterfield)
In episode one, Adam, the school bully has a problem. He romps along with Aimee but he can’t ejaculate and is a figure of fun because he has an abnormally enormous penis. He takes a handful of Viagara hoping to cure his ejaculation problem but is beset with Priapism. Yes, it sounds crude, and it is … but persist.
The Sex Therapy Clinic: L to R Maeve (Emma Mackey), Otis (Asa Butterfield) and Adam (Connor Swindells)
Maeve realizes how good Otis is at talking to people about their problems (from listening to his mum) and he has the attentive listening skills. They go into business together as sex therapists in the High School. They set up shop in the old toilet wing, which is a forbidden area because of asbestos.
Maeve (Emma Mackey) and Aimee (Aimee Lou Wood)
The series explores teen fears … interestingly starting with “It’s too big” rather than the reverse worry of males of that age. There are gay, lesbian, celibate problems (the Right To Life girl in one episode is hilarious describing what she DOES do while avoiding penetrative sex).
It’s not simply bawdy or crude. Every episode has genuinely touching moments. The abortion clinic in Episode 3 introduces one of many “one off” characters, Sarah (Lu Corfield) an older woman who is incredibly irritating because she’s nervous … we find she has three kids already, and befriends the teenagers. It’s poignant. Then there’s Episode 5 where Eric is dressed in drag to go to a movie as fun, and is assaulted and beaten up by two homophobes. Genuinely moving. Then when Jakob, apparently a stereotypical hunky, randy plumber finds himself analysed by Dr Jean, his response is genuinely touching too.
There is something that touches on the real, the sincere and the poignant amidst the humour and bawdiness in every episode. Characters and the plot lines are so explicit about sex, but time after time, the lesson is that friendship, caring, empathy, are the most important things. Yet not once does the script preach at us. Drugs and alcohol feature (obviously) but no one taking them is shown in a positive light as a result.
Parental relationships figure highly. Dr Jean and Otis. Extreme liberal with prurient interest. Eric and his Christian family and a caring dad. Jackson with his two incredibly pushy lesbian mums. Adam with the grim authoritarian dad. Maeve only has her brother, Sean, and he only appears in the last three episodes.
Eric (Ncuti Gatwa) and Lily (Tanya Reynolds) play dressing up
For our generation, it’s incredibly explicit. We grew up in an era where Health & Efficiency, a magazine for Naturists was passed around the school playground, so we could look at naked middle aged people standing glumly in supermarkets with wire baskets or doing mass calesthenics with revealed wobbly bits in a field. We had sex education in biology in our third term in our first year at my single-sex grammar school Our teacher, a Mr Bruce-Mitford, mainly focussed on flowers, frogs and extreme varieties of venereal disease (sores and pustules illustrated), as they did in those days. Before the brief ten minute film, I recall the warning: If any boy laughs or sniggers during the film, they will be sent out of the room, and will never learn how to do it. Later, we explored the Encylopedia Britannica in the school library, and eventually graduated to trying to puzzle out how to connect lingams and yonis in spectacularly difficult positions in The Kama Sutra.
I did worry at one point that the series was setting up a list of things kids are expected to do. E.g. Episode 2 when Eric demonstrates fellatio to the girls with bananas. However, as the series points out, they’ve all seen porn on their phones.
CASTING
six characters lead plot ‘threads.’ That is, events happen to them independently of any of the other lead characters being present: Otis, Maeve, Eric, Jean, Jackson and Adam. In a novel. I’d call them point of view characters. A pointer to Series 2, already in preparation, is that in episode 7, the Swedish handyman hunk, Jakob, and his daughter Ola get an independent scene with Mr Groff. When couples are bonking, they appear outside the main thread (e.g. Lily in Episode 8).
Otis (Asa Butterfield) counsels two unhappy lesbians.
The casting is a major strength. Asa Butterfield (Otis) has been in big movies. He was the lead in Martin Scorsese’s Hugo, then Bruno in The Boy With Striped Pyjamas, Norman in Nanny McPhee & The Big Bang, Gardner Elliot in The Space Between Us. At age 22, he still looks 16, and has spent his career playing younger than he is.
Emma Mackey as Maeve
Reviews talk about “breakout” stars, but the only real new one is Emma Mackey as Maeve. This is the co-lead role with Asa Butterfield and it is her first major role. She is a massive talent. She’s also half-French.
Gillian Anderson as Dr Jean Milburn
Gillian Anderson (Jean) is the most famous, and was Dana Scully in The X-Files. You cannot tell in any way that she was born in Chicago … but then she has played Margaret Thatcher, Miss Havisham and Anna in War & Peace.
Ncuti Gatwaas Eric
Eric is played by Ncuti Gatwa. He is an incredibly sympathetic and lovable character. We saw him in Emma Rice’s controversial A Midsummer Night’s Dream (LINK TO REVIEW) at Shakespeare’s Globe in 2016, when he played Demetrius, and again as Jack Absolute in 2018 in The Rivals at The Watermill Theatre. I’ll quote my linked review:
Ncuti Gatwa plays Jack Absolute, and I have the feeling that he is one of those names I just had to check how to spell, but will not need to check in a couple of years’ time because I’ll have seen it often. He is a perfect, handsome Jack The Lad with a wide range of background facial expressions that had me laughing.
I am not alone in praising him:
Perhaps the best storyline of “Sex Education,” however, belongs to Otis’ best friend. Eric (Ncuti Gatwa) is a funny, enthusiastic, ambitious, openly gay teen. Much to his frustration, that combination of traits has made him both an outlier and an object of curiosity in their town. His protective father doesn’t understand him; the only other out gay in school is embarrassed by him; even Otis sometimes takes his determined ebullience for granted. In Eric’s case, “Sex Education” moves past the teen show staple of a coming-out story to explore what happens next. Over the course of the first season, Eric grapples with finding his place in the world, the temptation to compromise and the feeling that his natural flamboyance has made small-minded people write him off as a joke. Gatwa is a clear and immediate standout. Caroline Framke, Variety
Jackson (Kedar Stirling-Williams)
Kedar Williams-Stirling as the head boy / swimming champion / Maeve’s boyfriend has an impressive IMDB listing including 39 episodes of Wolf Blood.
Then there’s Connor Swindells as school bully, Adam. Adam appears in every episode, but often very briefly – yet he remains an important figure. When we meet him he’s simple nasty and brutish and a bit thick. What happens is that the more we see of his family, the more we begin to realize why he is like he is and feel sorry for hisself-imposed isolation.
Those are the six main roles, but there’s strength in depth, so that even a tiny role, Jeffrey, is played by Joe Wilkinson. Jeffrey is the husband of the trailer park manager and appears fleetingly in three episodes. He appeared prominently in all 25 episodes of the sitcom Him & Her as Dan, the weird neighbour.
LOCATION
Ben Taylor (Director of 4 episodes):
We wanted to make a show with lockers from The Breakfast Club in it. It was stylistically a deliberate choice early on that we dislocated it from geographically knowing exactly where it was. Mid-Atlantic, American influence, but British ingredients.
Location upsets some reviewers because it is a fantasy realm. We have English high school kids in Wales apparently attending a classic American movie high school, though it is England. In one episode Aimee suggests that sports star head boy Jackson could be president one day. Alpha girl Maeve points out We don’t have presidents in our country. then Episode 7 is the Dance or Ball. Proms are American High School Movie musts, slowly creeping into Britain (though we had School Dances in the 1960s). As they say twice in the script, It’s an appropriated American tradition that celebrates sexism.
The series was filmed in Wales but everyone has English accents.
The English / American cross fertilization is deliberate. Over decades, the film Grease has topped poll after poll as Britain’s favourite movie. Then Ben Blatt’s Nabokov’s Favourite Word Is Mauve: The Literary Quirks of Our Most Famous Authors, traces the great increase in use of British English words among American kids since the success of Harry Potter books and films, particularly blokes, knickers and blimey. An American setting ticks the positive boxes for British kids. British English accents do the same for American viewers.
I’d guess that the central point in setting location was obtaining the recently vacated University of South Wales campus in Caerlon, Newport. It’s huge and only closed in 2016 so doesn’t look run down. Here the deliberate UK / US cross referencing starts. The school is Moredale Secondary. Some UK schools are called “Secondary” but they would all take younger kids, either 11 to 18, 12 to 18, or 13 to 18 depending on area. Everyone at Moredale is 16 to 18. So it’s not a “Secondary School” at all, it’s a Sixth Form College, and it would most likely be called a College or Academy in Britain. Possibly a High School or Grammar School in some areas (but that would take younger kids too).
For non-British readers, Sixth form is the two years leading to A levels, between 16 and 18. Originally British state schools had first form (age 11), second form (12), third form (13), fourth form (14) and fifth form (15), then A levels for more academic kids were lower sixth form (16) and upper sixth form (17). That has been replaced in state schools by Year numbers starting at primary school,, but the word sixth form persists.
Caerlon is huge. Very few British schools have more than 1000 students, whereas some American ones have 3000. It looks American. Reviewers complain that no one wears school uniform, but while an 11-18 High School or Grammar School might have uniform for 16 to 18 year olds, a Sixth Form College definitely wouldn’t.
The clothes are American retro. The jocks are holding American footballs and wearing American Letter jackets. Adam, the head teacher’s son, is threatened with being sent to “military school” if his behaviour does not improve. We do not have military schools in Britain. The long line of lockers reference every American high school movie. No English high school has a swimming pool that size with spectator seats. The newspapers we see are the fictional “National Echo” so we avoid being grounded or dated by real newspapers.
Maeve lives in a trailer park. Yes, they exist in Britain, but trailer trash is an American stereotype.
The cast is multi-ethnic, and the ethnic balance looks like London might in 2019, but the Monmouthshire / Gloucestershire border areas are nowhere near that multi-ethnic. An Afro-Caribbean church (for Eric’s family) seems most unlikely on the Welsh border.
As well as an indistinct geographical reference, the time is also vague, or dislocated. Kids have modern phones, and text and bully and conspire and send embarrassing photos and video links. The cars are often shining new-looking British Leyland models from the 1980s. Eric’s dad drives what looks like a new Austin Allegro (built from 1972 to 1983). It’d be collectible vintage now. The head teacher’s car looks like a late 80s or early 90s British Leyland (aka Austin Rover aka Rover) model. Jean drives an older Mercedes Estate. The military school guy has a Y prefix registration car, which is 2001. Clothes could be any era from 1980 on to today. But then Otis’s dad, resident in America, communicates via Facetime. His mum works on a modern MacBook.
According to Tunefinds, there are 85 songs used in the series. The superbly curated found music is mainly English 80s: The The, China Crisis, The Cure, with a dash of earlier classics … Small Faces, Muddy Waters, Al Green, Parliament, Tommy James & The Shondells. Originals are by Ezra Furman. In Episode 7, Ezra Furman appears leading the band, The Visions, at the school dance, playing some of his back catalogue and some new songs.
You can’t pin the timeframe down:
Laurie Nunn’s new dramedy so thoroughly embraces American high school tropes of the ’80s — from virgin nerds to jocks in letterman jackets, chain-smoking rebels to mean girls in Technicolor “Heathers” blazers — that it can be genuinely jarring to see someone pull out an iPhone. Caroline Framke, Variety
I’d guess the availability of the Caerlon campus was the starting point for location, but then everyone lives along the Wye Valley in Monmouthshire. I know it’s now part of Gwent, but as my Mum was born there in Crickhowell, I shall continue to call it by the county name on her birth certificate. The village is Llandogo, two miles north of Tintern.
Llandogo
The iron bridge which Otis and Eric cycle across so frequently is the Wye bridge in Tintern. Historically, one side of the bridge is in Wales, the other is in England. .
Tintern is a place we visit at least once and usually twice a year. It has the best secondhand children’s bookshop in Britain, but mainly it has the ruined abbey, our favourite place. We always make a point of going there when the swifts are nesting and the ruins are full of them
Tintern (my photo)
The wooden mansion where Otis lives with his sex therapist mum is called The Chalet and is at Symond’s Yat (in England) overlooking the River Wye. The caravan park where Maeve lives is also at Symond’s Yat.
I’ll note that the house is actually 18 miles from the bridge in Tintern, quite a bike ride for the kids … but I keep noticing this because I know the area so well. In the Sex Education Fantasy Realm it’s all walking distance. The other thing I will nerdishly mention is that in the huge wooden house, they send people upstairs to the bathroom, which is why a succession of mum’s one night stands wander into Otis’s room. I’ve never seen a house that size without a downstairs loo, plus by episode five the beefy Swedish handyman is working on the ground floor bathroom in full view from the kitchen.
It’s a special area for both of us. When we traced our family trees back, the route winds all around England and Wales then both our trees spookishly end up in Chepstow, the next town to Tintern, which also bridges England and Wales. It happens, even more weirdly in more than just two lines. If you’ve read James Long’s reincarnation novel Ferneyit’s about people continually meeting up in incarnations with a strong geographical connection.
The school hall
You can’t get hung up on distances in the film. The school hall interior at Moordale is a theatre in Penarth, 23 miles from its exterior.
THE AUTHOR AT TINTERN:
Karen & Peter Viney, Tintern Abbey
INSPIRATIONS
I mentioned the ongoing popularity of Grease.
The creator, Laurie Nunn, quotes those high school movies like Pretty in Pink as inspiring it. Ben Taylor mentions The Breakfast Club. Episode 5 reminded me of Mean Girls, but …
Kubiac and Parker Lewis: Parker Lewis Can’t Lose
The big one is surely the US high school sitcom series Parker Lewis Can’t Lose. We have the box set. It ran from 1990 to 1993. Kids confess their problems to the central character, Parker Lewis. His best friend, Jerry Steiner, is a nerd. There’s a huge lumbering school bully, Larry Kubiac. The dragon-like Head Teacher Grace Muso promotes the syncophantic head boy, Frank Lemmer. There are lockers. In Sex Education the camera sometimes views the action through the locker … something Parker Lewis did all the time with fridges and lockers.
Trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZeT_LxvsvM
The sex-hungry but unsuccessful Lily very much reminded us of Mel (Kristen Schall)in Flight of The Concords with a touch of Daisy Haggard from Episodes. Then the toothy Aimee made us think of the (great) Sally Thomsett in Man About The House.
SEX EDUCATION: SEASON TWO
These are additional notes rather than a comprehensive look at Series Two. We decided to savour the series and to avoid binge viewing. That fell down when we watched Episode 3 and Episode 4 without stopping. After that we said “No more than one a night”
I was impressed by the gradual reappearance of existing characters as well as strong new ones.
Everyone’s favourite, Maeve, is held back until well into Episode One. Adam Groff is held back until Episode 2.
Episode 8’s finale is the production of Romeo & Juliet: The Musical, directed by Lily. A truly great comedy episode for any comedy ever.
THE NEW ONES …
There are major introductions:
Anne Marie Duff – Erin, Maeve’s ex(?) drug addicted mother. Recently seen on His Dark Materials.
Erin
Sami Outalbali -Rahim, is a French student, who fancies Eric.
Rahim
Chinenye Ezeudu – Viv is the hugely intelligent (and very large) BAME girl. Jackson becomes fond of her. No sizeism.
Viv
George Robinson – Isaac, in a wheelchair at the mobile home site, is the disabled lad
Isaac
James Purefoy – as Otis’s father has a bigger role this time.
Remi
Samantha Spiro – Maureen Groff, now seeking to get away from her husband. A minor role in Season 1 is greatly expanded
Maureen Groff
KEEPING THE LOCATION VAGUE
Universities might refer to campus, I’m not sure that most secondary schools do.
Adam
Then Adam Groff, the headmaster’s son is kept back until Episode 2. And they created an entire Army cadet location and scenes with lots of extras to show Adam’s exile to “military school.” That’s a strong nod to the deliberately vague Trans-Atlantic mood. The UK doesn’t have military schools, and if it were the army, expulsion would not be that simple.
Otis and Eric on the “Iron John” trek in the woods
Then Episode 5, Otis’s sex addict dad, Remi takes Otis and Eric off for some male bonding, camping in the woods. The “Iron John” stuff. That’s hugely widespread in America, way less so in the UK.
The Moordale Quiz team look American, and in Episode 8 even have an American yellow school bus. The rival team is in strict discipline British school uniform. (Stephen Fry appears as himself as quizmaster).
REAL SEX EDUCATION
They are careful … they stress “You don’t have to do it until you’re ready” – a major theme.
I was impressed when Ola goes to buy condoms and the returned Adam Groff is serving in the shop. The transaction is simple and automatic. I can’t think of any other comedy writer who would have avoided a laugh, or a sideways glance, but they do neither which is excellent. No shame and nothing funny about buying condoms.
The bit on anal douching was complete news to us. We have led sheltered lives.
Aimee and Maeve at the police station
Aimee (Aimee Lou Wood)’s theme is brilliantly handled and acted too. Aimee has a man masturbate over the side of her jeans on the packed bus to school, and initially doesn’t seem much bothered. Maeve makes her go to the police (who are both sensitive in talking to her). But then she’s afraid to get on the bus, then she goes off the idea of any contact with her boyfriend. It shows the long term resonance of that kind of sexual assault. She’s helped by an example of militant female bonding to get back on the bus. This shows the deeply serious underlying intent. The Intimacy Director said this in The Sunday Times:
We showed the vulnerability of young women in crowded places. How everyone remains quiet – the silence of that awful moment is overwhelming. The after effect of the asault ripples through every area of a woman’s life, and that is unacceptable.
Lily, played by the marvellous Tanya Reynolds, is shocked when Ola starts a Lesbian relationship and concerned that she has vaginismus. That gets resolved.
Among many serious asides is Maeve’s dilemma when she finds Erin has been using drugs again. She owes it to her 3 year old step sister to bring in the Social Services … we have a situation where “grassing up” a relative is the right thing to do.
INCLUSIVENESS
Eric’s relationship dilemma is sensitively handled … Rahim or Adam.
More was the introduction of the large girl, Bev,
Then we have the disabled lad in a wheelchair who begins to bond well with Maeve.
Rahim – says he’s “not Christian, but the name is Muslim (Ibrahim)
SONGS
The choices are exceptional.
Pale Blue Eyes by The Velvet Underground was so apposite in Episode 3, that it led us into watching Episode 4 straight away. Then that starts with Tommy James & The Shondells’ Hanky Panky. Someone knows their stuff on music.
[…] haven’t done a new review, just added a few notes and pictures to theSeason One article (LINKED […]
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