October 10, 2023 - 6:00pm
Last week, Netflix announced that Sex Education is its most-watched UK release of the year. Given the nature of the show, that might sound worrying, but it shouldn’t be. Despite the premise, Sex Education is the most wholesome teen show I have ever seen. It is so focused on character and virtue it is almost a Victorian morality tale (with, admittedly, a bit more masturbation).
I grew up on Dawson’s Creek and My So-Called Life, which were essentially multi-series romances with some background noise about being true to yourself and following your dreams. In my twenties, teen shows took a darker turn. Skins, which came out in 2007, was a litany of parties, drugs and self-harm. Its bleak, nihilistic vision of youth is echoed in Euphoria, the major show of recent years for that age demographic. Disillusionment and cynicism seemed the order of the day for Generation Z.
But then came Sex Education. The marketing attempts to draw viewers in with the promise of titillation. It’s a bait-and-switch, though, because Sex Education is not, really, about sex. That is just the hook for a show about human relationships. It centres on old-fashioned character: honesty, kindness and loyalty to those we love even as identities shift.
This all becomes more explicit in the last episode. Maeve writes a letter to Otis, the son of a sex therapist, with whom she had set up an informal sex clinic at school. She thanks him for making her feel seen, for helping her trust, and acknowledges that the people who had come to them looking for advice on sex “were really just looking for connection”.
A large part of the joy of the show is that it takes all relationships seriously. The friendship between Eric and Otis has its own arc which is attended to as meaningfully as the romances. Unusually, the parent-child relationships are explored too. Parents are so often absent or oppressive in the stories told to children and young adults, but in Sex Education they get their own tales, as they evolve alongside their children.
Yes, it is extremely “of the moment’”when it comes to identity. By the last series there is barely a character who does not lead with a protected characteristic (it is quite odd to see so many people of colour living on the Welsh border). And yes, gender dysphoria does feature too.
Yet it is a good thing that it has been so widely watched. The stories we tell, and those which are told to us, matter. We are storied selves, stitching together who we will be from the available narrative material. Wisdom traditions and social science agree that the health of our relationships is the most important factor in our thriving. It may not be “sexy”, but it’s true. So a show which uses (awkward, sweet and admirably non-pornified ) sex to teach millions that fact can only be a good thing.
Elizabeth Oldfield is the former head of Theos. Her writing has appeared in the FT, Prospect and The Times. Her Twitter handle is @esoldfield
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SubscribeOver 4 seasons Sex Ed went from constant raunch to almost no sex at all, which may have been a relief. I must admit that I got a headache trying to figure out who was transitioning to what or who identified as what. The overall atmosphere of the show is a rather feverish fantasyland of diversity, almost a parody. But I watched the last season with enjoyment.
“We are storied selves…”. Very well put. I often look with despair at the brutality of the most popular shows and movies, for this very reason. How do my friends, family and neighbors see themselves amidst the fog of cruelty and brutality that they sit and watch? What kind of narrative arc informs their sub-conscious minds?
Violence has always been part of human stories, real and imagined. Every “cracking good yarn” is full of it. But the performative cruelties of todays entertainments are another thing altogether.
So three chears for “Sex Education”. Perhaps one day I’ll watch a bit of it.
Dear, oh dear, this review makes Sex Education sound as dull as ditch water. It’s far more interesting than that! Having veered in series 1 from an hilarious and sometimes toe-curling romp through teenage sexual angst, culminating at the end of series 2 with the funniest scene I’ve ever seen (remember Romeo and Juliet the musical?); in series three it began to feel a little too earnest. I’m currently trying to work out what the writers are trying to say in series 4: at times, it feels like the show is parodying itself. We have the hideous pastel dystopia of Cavendish College where meditation rooms and slides are more important than a functioning lift and the school is led by a grotesque pair of narcissists. The humour is lost in favour of preaching on ‘identity’ which is so incoherent as to make me wonder if in fact the writers are clumsily attempting to shine a light on the absurdity of their own seemingly ‘woke’ agenda. Is this series a subtle and knowing critique or burying itself in a pile of its own contradictory ordure. Initially poignant and powerful scenes are undermined by that one step too far into parody. Isaac’s protest over the lift and Aisha’s abandonment when the fire alarm goes off is wrecked by the sudden appearance of a boy making preachy statements about attitudes to disability straight to camera, when that point had already been made perfectly well within the drama; everyone then turns round and wonders where this kid appeared from – “I don’t think he goes here”. So… preaching or parody?
Poor hapless Eric is first targeted by the aforementioned grotesque narcissists, then seems to be having conversations with god (!) Following a great scene in which he eschews baptism into the church that won’t accept him as a gay man, he is then informed by God that he’s been set up as the gay Messiah. Blimey!
I’m half way through episode 8 and hope that, by the end I might work out wtf is going on.
But we are not just “storied selves”, are we? That phrase is itself merely a fashionable description of ontological deracination. We are animals, and like every other species we have a biological nature. Human nature both enables us and limits us. No body – no life. Human culture is the unique differentiator of our species, but it too is just an expression of human nature. Denial of this truth allows all kinds of distortions to enter the discourse, such as that people can change sex or that gender dysphoria is not a disorder.