Netflix's 'Sex Education' Is Hilarious, Raunchy, Sweet & An Utter Joy To Binge [Review]

Netflix – and its algorithm – knows the value of nostalgia. The streaming service has capitalized on it time and again with programming from the retro-infused “Stranger Things” to full-on reboots like “Fuller House,” understanding that the emotion is one of the easiest ways to get audiences quickly invested in their content. “Sex Education” takes a dual approach, with a slippery setting that’s both now and then, and more references to beloved teen movies than an Ariana Grande video. But this new Netflix series does more than just coast on our attachments; it makes us fall in love with each of its characters and its fresh, frank approach to the TV rom-com genre.

Director Ben Taylor (“Catastrophe“) helms the first four episodes, setting the joyful tone and the colorful style. When we meet 16-year-old Otis (Asa Butterfield), it’s unclear exactly where and when we are. There’s a vintage aesthetic to his home and clothes, from the enviably verdant wallpaper all over the home he shares with his sex therapist mother Jean (Gillian Anderson) to his ’80s striped puffer jacket. The musical cues – Billy Idol, INXS and The Smiths – tell us we’re in the past, but teens text and mention Pornhub. Everyone at Moordale Secondary speaks with an English accent, but his school looks more like an American public high school from the movies, full of lockers and absent of the hallmark uniforms of British education. There are surprise and delight in how “Sex Education” plays with its setting, but it serves a larger purpose than just style. By incorporating elements of the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s, the series feels truly universal in its stories of love, sex, and relationships in a way that it would struggle to do if firmly set in either the present or a single year in the past.

Even though “Sex Education” is largely focused on its teenaged characters, its appeal is broader, reminding us that however much we hopefully mature and grow as adults, there always remains a bit of the awkwardness and the excitement of our early relationships. Despite having a sex therapist for a mother – okay, perhaps because he has a sex therapist for a mother – Otis is a self-diagnosed sexual late-bloomer, who feels like everyone around him is doing it, when he couldn’t be farther from that milestone. His only real friend is Eric (Ncuti Gatwa), the gay son of African immigrants, but he begins to connect with Moordale Secondary’s resident bad girl Maeve (Emma Mackey). She sees opportunity in his acquired knowledge about sex and relationships from his mother, and soon, they’re charging their fellow students for his insight into their love troubles with each episode focusing on a different subject.

Anderson is the big name attached here, and she’s marvelous as always, getting to be sexier than most 50-year-old women are allowed to be on screen. We love every minute in which she appears, but the focus in “Sex Education” is really on Butterfield’s Otis and his peers. Though the actor is 21-years-old in reality, he nails all the insecurity, weirdness, and physicality of being a 16-year-old boy, making us want to pat him on his head and tell him everything will be okay, buddy. As Maeve and Eric, respectively, Mackey and Gatwa are the real finds. Neither has had a significant filmography before this show, but they’re both so winning in such different ways here, while displaying incredible vulnerability.

Though it bears a passing resemblance to both, “Sex Education” is more than just a cross between “Masters of Sex” and “Lovesick.” For her first show, creator Laurie Nunn has managed to make something both self-assured and original.”Sex Education” moves between hilarious laughter, all-out raunch, and heart-bursting sweetness with ease, making it one of the most watchable, binge-able shows in recent memory. Cheeky and sweet, the 45-minute comedy displays profound affection and compassion for each of its characters, from gawky Otis to the school bully Adam (Connor Swindells). It understands the complexities of all kinds of relationships – romantic, sexual, friend, and parental – with wisdom beyond its years.

“Sex Education” hits all the familiar points of teen movies like the house party and the school dance, but with its eight-episode season, it allows us to get to know far more of its characters far better than a standard two-hour film in the genre could do. You spend a quick six hours with these people, and it only leaves you wanting to hang out with them more. [A-]