Sex Education: Season 1, Episode 1

“Ejaculation. Jizz. Spunk. Man milk.”

Mrs Llamastrangler and I have settled on this as our new Netflix series to binge after a glimpse of the promising trailer. We’re rather glad we did.

A good first episode is always an impressive thing, as it has to do double duty in being a good piece of telly AND introducing the premise, characters and tone. This episode does both very well indeed.

So we have Otis, a teenage boy who is having trouble masturbating- and his highly amusing and extremely cool sex therapist mother Jean, a superb and unrecognisable Gillian Anderson in a truly amazing and charismatic performance. Otis’ best friend Eric is witty, gay and unpopular- and played by an impressive young actor with superb comic timing.

Eric is being bullied by Adam, who is in turn being tyrannised by his total bastard of a father, who happens to be the headmaster and should know better. He in turn is having trouble climaxing with his girlfriend Aimee, who is herself being more subtly bullied. Meanwhile we have outcast Maeve, ostracised as women and girls seen to enjoy sex do often are. All these characters are clearly established and interesting and it is plausible how, at the end, Otis sets up an unofficial sex therapy business with the rather interesting Maeve, who is clearly far more intelligent and interesting than her stereotype.

This is, indeed, a wonderful bit of telly. It’s gloriously quotable (“Marjorie, how are you getting on with your penis?”) and fun. It’s also refreshing to see a TV drama that treats sex as a real, nuanced part of our lives rather than just titillation- and it’s particularly refreshing to see women and girls who are shown as actively sexual in individual ways, as in real life, instead of all that whore/virgin dichotomy bollocks.

This is very promising indeed. Here goes the binge...