Netflix’s Sex Education premiered in 2019 with a straight sex scene and a faked orgasm prompting the now iconic line, “Where’s the spunk, Adam?” And if you told me then that it would go on to be one of my favorite shows of all time, I’m not sure I would’ve believed you.
Some shows never discuss sex at all. Others portray it in wildly unrealistic ways. Still others can be downright harmful — whether it’s filled with moral panic about hook-up culture and teen pregnancy, or storylines glorifying toxic relationships. But Sex Education, a show about the fictional Moordale Secondary School and the lives of its students, staff, and parents as they navigate through the often confusing world of sex and relationships, is in a league of its own.
Sex Education is built on a diverse cast of nuanced characters and sensitive story-telling that’s led it to critical and commercial success. It’s raunchy, refreshing, and unquestionably relevant, and is a show I think everyone watching TV needs to see. Here’s why.
Warning: There are spoilers ahead!
We All Need a Little Education
Early on, we learn that the teenage students of Moordale are horny. But they’re also hopelessly confused, and when rebel girl Maeve Wiley realizes that her dorky classmate Otis Milburn is actually good at giving sex advice (thanks to his mother, Dr. Jean Milburn, who is a sex therapist), she enlists him in an underground sex clinic to help out their peers — and earn a little money along the way.
After all, as Otis’s best friend Eric so eloquently points out in the show’s first episode, everyone in school is “either thinking about shagging, about to shag, or actually shagging.” As the clinic grows, Otis begins to be known as “that weird sex kid,” who helps his classmates through the various anxieties of learning about sex as a teenager. And, by extension, he helps viewers.
Now, I’m a few years past being a teenager, but I certainly remember feeling like one — enough to know that the advice he gives out would’ve saved younger me and my peers a lot of trouble.
In fact, a global study on sex and relationship education programs from 1990 to 2015 found that much of what we are taught about sex in school — if we are taught at all — is overwhelmingly negative and out of touch with what young people experience.
There is too much emphasis on abstinence and moralizing, and many programs fail to share practical information on community health services, contraception, and crucially, the emotional component of sexual relationships and sexuality as a whole. It’s also overwhelmingly heteronormative and sexist.
This point is clearest in season 3, when new Moordale headmaster Hope rolls out a sex education curriculum designed primarily to scare teenagers out of having sex through harmful stereotypes. (We later on learn that Hope herself is a victim of this type of regressive, procreation-centered education, when she describes her inability to carry a child as her body not doing “the one thing it’s supposed to do.”)
But outside of Otis’s surprisingly wise pieces of advice — “Stop passively hearing and start actively listening,” he tells a troubled couple in one of the earlier episodes — there’s so much to be learned from the stories of the characters themselves.
For instance, when the new old-school sex education curriculum sent Moordale’s popular kids into a frenzied panic over HIV, the nurse at the sexual health clinic deftly provides what might be TV’s most succinct and positive lesson on HIV in 30 seconds. It’s a scene that script consultant Alix Fox describes as a “life ambition.”
In the latest Sex Education season alone, there’s so much more to pick up. Maeve and Isaac navigate intimacy with physical disability. Jackson and Cal communicate their expectations and boundaries. And Eric and Adam figure out the logistics of gay sex.
Behind the camera, the show’s focus on safe, consensual, inclusive, and healthy sex carries into the production process, as well. The show’s intimacy coordinators, Ita O’Brien and David Thackeray, work to make sure that the actors themselves are comfortable with their scene partners and what goes on between them — allowing for intimate scenes that feel more authentic.
Moreover, the production also consulted with George Robinson, the actor who plays Isaac and who is also disabled, as well as consultants from Enhance the UK and Backup Trust, for the character’s storyline and intimate scenes.
Growth as a Group Project
Given its title, Sex Education tackles a lot of issues surrounding sex and sexuality, but where it shines is its portrayal of friendship and family.
Whether it’s Maeve and Aimee promising to be “each other’s mums,” Ola telling Adam that she loves him like a friend when he’s never had a friend before, or all the times Eric and Otis were there for each other — platonic intimacy is a powerful message in a culture that so often promotes individualism.
Even more hopeful is how growing together is shown to help characters who are trying to overcome generational trauma, like Adam and Otis, as well as sexual assault trauma, as we see with Aimee’s continuing journey towards recovery.
Thoughtful, Authentic Representation
For casting director Lauren Evans, diversity is critical — and Sex Education’s commitment to it is especially impressive given that the bar has been quite low historically when it comes to sexual, racial, and age diversity on TV. “It was hugely important to find an eclectic ensemble that was representative,” she says, “so everyone could see themselves on screen.”
But the show’s commitment to thoughtful, authentic representation doesn’t stop at casting. That’s because the diverse cast of characters on Sex Education not only get to exist — they also get to have rich interior lives, with stories that are treated with kindness by both the showrunners and (most of) the other characters around them.
For example, when one of the teens worries that, unlike her horny classmates, she doesn’t want to have sex with anyone, Jean not only explains to her what asexuality is, but she also reassures her. “Sex doesn’t make us whole,” she reasons. “And so, how could you ever be broken?”
The show also introduces two non-binary characters in the latest season. The more outspoken Cal tells Layla that they’ll speak up when they’re ready to, and even shows them the proper way to bind their chest. Like the sex scenes mentioned above, these affirming scenes were also made in collaboration with non-binary people like consultant Jodie Mitchell and Dua Saleh, the actor who plays Cal.
Beyond Tropes, Toward Empathy
It’s easy to depict young people as flat caricatures or have them wallow in teenage melodrama, but Sex Education does neither. It treats its flawed teen characters and their trials and tribulations with respect and nuance we don’t often get to see. And what’s more, it provides the equally flawed adult characters the same room to grow.
At its core, Sex Education puts forth a simple idea: everyone wants to love and be loved for who they are, even though many of us are still figuring out what that means, and how to do that for other people — especially where sex and sexuality are involved.
It’s made me laugh and cry, and I think it’s a show that allows us to dream of a world that we can build together with empathy and healthy communication.
In Sex Education, teens fall in love, fight, break up, make up, stand up for their beliefs, and bond and grow with each other. And throughout all this, the show feels like a triumph — one of heart and, like the baby we welcome at the end of season 3, of joy.