Sex Edu­ca­tion and the search for truer pleasures

The sec­ond sea­son of Sex Edu­ca­tion opens with a three-minute mon­tage of its 16-year-old lead char­ac­ter Otis (Asa But­ter­field) mas­tur­bat­ing in dif­fer­ent loca­tions to a choral record­ing of ​‘I Touch Myself’. The euphor­ic tone is mag­ni­fied by the fact that through­out sea­son one, Otis strug­gled deeply to self-plea­sure. These are not just orgasms we’re wit­ness­ing, but lit­tle tri­umphs over adversity.

Otis’ hard-won ejac­u­la­tions are emblem­at­ic of how the show treats sex. Yes, a list of the sub­jects it broach­es might read like an attempt to score shal­low tit­il­la­tion points, yet cre­ator Lau­rie Nunn is always look­ing for ways to con­nect sex­u­al com­plex­i­ties to the per­son­al con­text of each character.

This goes for the show’s piv­otal char­ac­ters, which include Otis, his sex ther­a­pist mum Dr Jean Mil­burn (Gillian Ander­son), his gay best friend Eric (Ncu­ti Gat­wa) and his unob­tain­able love inter­est Maeve (Emma Mack­ey) – and it goes equal­ly for sup­port­ing char­ac­ters, played by a uni­form­ly excel­lent young cast. Sex Edu­ca­tion is not inter­est­ed in cheap gags – it’s gun­ning for truer plea­sures, and, cru­cial­ly, what lies in the way of these plea­sures for teenagers, their par­ents and even their teachers.

In sea­son one, Otis and Maeve set up a sex-advice clin­ic for fel­low stu­dents in a dis­used toi­let on the school premis­es, with Otis chan­nelling insights gleaned from being a sex therapists’s son and Maeve run­ning the busi­ness. This oper­a­tion is under­mined in sea­son two by Jean her­self. A san­guine, pantsuit-wear­ing Gillian Ander­son, rolling out the long vow­els of an edu­cat­ed Eng­lish­woman, rocks up at school, offer­ing a learned ear to stu­dents and grown-ups alike.

They end up queu­ing around the block to con­fess their most shame­ful secrets and woes, from being mar­ried to a man who won’t touch you, to being embar­rassed about your cum face, to not being inter­est­ed in sex at all.

There is a sus­tained inter­est in LGBT+ rep­re­sen­ta­tion; many char­ac­ters are qui­et­ly fig­ur­ing out that they are bi, pan or asex­u­al, while oth­er gay and les­bian char­ac­ters are out and pre­oc­cu­pied by issues unre­lat­ed to their ori­en­ta­tion, such as how to anal douche for the first time, which man to com­mit to, and whether to stay in a fraught marriage.

The writ­ing is con­sis­tent­ly fun­ny, lean­ing into warm­ly-obser­vant depic­tions of absurd sit­u­a­tions. In episode five, Otis and Eric go on a camp­ing trip with Otis’ dad, Remi, a pseu­do-intel­lec­tu­al writer who left long ago and now has anoth­er fam­i­ly. He proves less than adept when it comes to erect­ing their tent. As rain falls, a weep­ing Remi attacks the tent, shout­ing at it, ​“I’ve been through so much more than you! How many bloody doc­tor­ates have you got?” Otis and Eric look on, con­cerned. Lat­er, when Jean comes to res­cue them, Otis tells her, ​“He fought the tent like it was a person.”

This camp­ing deba­cle is not sim­ply a com­ic aside. Noth­ing in Sex Edu­ca­tion is throw­away. Every set-piece is designed to simul­ta­ne­ous­ly enter­tain and deep­en a character’s arc. One of the most pro­found things the show does is to root ado­les­cent strug­gles with­in rela­tion­ships to pri­ma­ry care­givers. Maeve is wrestling with whether to trust her moth­er (Anne-Marie Duff), a drug addict who has moved into the car­a­van where Maeve is used to liv­ing alone, car­ry­ing a young daugh­ter and claims of new­found sobriety.

As for Otis, his dad – who left him and Jean years ago for anoth­er woman – rep­re­sents the type of man he des­per­ate­ly does not want to become. Otis is in a rela­tion­ship with a sweet and seem­ing­ly straight­for­ward girl, Ola (who has her own self-dis­cov­er­ies in store) when he realis­es that he is still in love with Maeve. After learn­ing that Remi’s lat­est mar­riage has failed due to his wom­an­is­ing, he sends a rash text, ​“I’m sor­ry Maeve, I can’t see you any­more,” con­sign­ing his feel­ings to a com­part­ment where they will inevitably leak out of and con­fuse his behav­iour. The fear of becom­ing our par­ents can lead us to act in dis­hon­est ways, is an insight of wide merit.

The arc that real­ly got to me was that of Aimee, Maeve’s best friend. She is a loy­al, hap­py-go-lucky and sex­u­al­ly con­fi­dent girl until one day on the bus ride to school a strange man wanks onto her jeans, leav­ing a stain. Ini­tial­ly she brush­es it off but, over the episodes that fol­low, we see her with­draw­ing – not want­i­ng to have sex with her boyfriend, not want­i­ng to catch the bus, walk­ing miles every­day instead.

Her trau­ma is a qui­et motif until, in the season’s penul­ti­mate episode, her arc explodes in a mov­ing dis­play of female rage and sol­i­dar­i­ty. Five of her female school-mates take her to a junk­yard to smash stuff up with a base­ball bat. The next morn­ing, the same school­mates show up to help her to catch the bus again. The shot of the six of them sit­ting on the back row of a bus while ​‘Sev­en­teen’ by Sharon Van Etten plays is one of the most beau­ti­ful moments I’ve ever seen on screen.