"I looked at some cheese and got an erection.": SEX EDUCATION on Netflix

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Due to popular demand, "Sex Education" now has its own thread! Discuss herein those houses, your kinks, and how come the actors playing Headmaster Groff and Adam aren't actually related.

this show: it’s good

the look of outraged, crushed disappointment on Maeve's face when Jackson doesn't notice her fancy dance dress and turned-out style in S1 is a really great bit of acting

that's all I got right now but there are so many great little expression bits in this show

it’s acting but also direction: the camera placement etc allows us to notice this. in theatre nerd terminology the show is able to find or even invent “moments” in the script that many other shows would miss or not think of

the writing is really great - the characters are all classic high school comedy archetypes on the face of it but every one of them has surprising little flourishes and the cast do such a great job of fleshing them out

as i said on the netflix thread, this show just has so much heart

also i think it might be genuinely educational for a younger audience too?

yeah - there is a public service ethos running through it which ought to be giving BBC drama commissioners the shivers tbh

re: moments also thinking of the endless subtextual glances between jacob and gillian anderson, each of which conveys a pageworth of script

Sex Education is ostensibly a British show set in a nameless British town (in some mythic part of Wales? Somerset? Who knows) featuring mostly British actors. The school however is a like a fever dream amalgamation of every American TV high school rolled into one with some extra 'zones', such as the toilets, which appear to be some kind of unconscious heterotopia into which the adolescent therapeutic formulations of the protagonist can be aired to his 'clients'. There are so many beautiful details to unearth in this mise-en-scene-heavy show. Just a few: there is a disproportionate amount of dungarees, denim, rainbow and pastel colours in the wardrobes of the town's inhabitants; there seems to be some kind brilliant progressive local art scene; there is seemingly only one shop. So many excellent characters, such wonderful storylines. I can't throw enough superlatives at this show.

― tangenttangent, Thursday, February 13, 2020 9:16 PM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

This is so hyper-realised and strange and intelligently written that it kind of transcends grossness...it's like a perfect cross between Adrian Mole, 10 Things I Hate About You and idk Lynch.

― tangenttangent, Thursday, February 13, 2020 9:22 PM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

If I may play the Otis to your Maeve, this show is the most convincingly surreal mass-market UK show in...decades? Kitchen sink drama has been cast away, and replaced with some exotic and highly erudite melange of Whit Stillman, Freaks & Geeks, 13 Reasons Why, 10 Things I Hate About You...all the best US teen fare, in essence, transported to our once-dingy, now somehow gloriously exalted isle and pumped full of psychoanalysis and sex hormones (I was gonna say Adrian Mole ffs haha) until it quivers right on the edge of madness. No idea how it was greenlit or made (the SETS) but the fact it's such a success is testament to how hungry the UK viewing public was for something that aspires for our nation to be more than just a vessel for no-nonsense grit. To paraphrase Pynchon, when Britain sleeps, does she dream? And when she dreams, does she dream of America?

All this for a show about horny teenagers *enormous Eric laugh*

― imago, Thursday, February 13, 2020 9:25 PM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

The storylines might be conventional sometimes, but a lot of the characterisation is distinctly strange, and it's the collective details of the town that add up to create something far more than the sum of its parts.

Lynch might be a bit of a stretch (though the surrealness is amped up in S2), but I was thinking particularly of the isolated sets: the derelict bathroom, a perfectly symmetrical 'trailer park' in a valley somewhere, a distinctly old-fashioned restaurant, a breakfast table overlooking a ravine, the busstop in the middle of nowhere.

― tangenttangent, Thursday, February 13, 2020 9:37 PM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

It's surreal in the way Whit Stillman's Damsels In Distress was surreal - it creates a completely & insanely idiosyncratic world out of familiar materials

― imago, Thursday, February 13, 2020 9:39 PM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is our new favourite show obv

also, we posted all of that before witnessing the show's intensity redouble in the second half of S2

Every episode of Season 2 broke my heart and then put it back together again. It is just so replete with every beautiful and painful human thing.

Also I have lived every second of that scene where Gillian Anderson tells Jakob to get his stuff out of her house.

Greatly enjoyed this show, though bits of the finale didn't work for me. I didn't believe that Maeve would just leave her phone behind (with no pass code, despite trafficking in student secrets?) so that Isaac could delete the voicemail that Otis conveniently mentioned leaving -- struck me too much as an artificial sitcom trope.

The pasted text above about surrealism helps me a little peace with the school play, but on the whole, I found it pretty over the top: I know the show takes place is a much more progressive, sex-friendly bubble, but I found it quite difficult to believe that the villainous headmaster was the only adult who raised an eyebrow at the students staging Romeo and Juliet: An XXX Parody.

Otherwise, I love the timelessness mentioned above, the bell bottoms alongside '90s pastels. Aside from the mobile phones, there also seemed to be a lack of modern technology. Lots of record players, '70s television sets, etc.

In this world, people seem to give, gratifying, much less of a shit about technology, which is why presumably Maeve had no security on her phone. It raised an eyebrow but it's just a device to sustain the tragic failed romance tbh

The school play was everything. The show exists in bizarro world and only Groff was going to have any sort of problem with it. Lily is arguably series MVP and she required her moment

Also, Isaac is a pretty likeable for a romantic heel. This show is SO good at having its characters be grey areas. Otis really is an arsehole! And yet we totally root for him

This is the best available Gillian Anderson content, T or F

and how come the actors playing Headmaster Groff and Adam aren't actually related.

yes what the hell, they have the same face at times, is this just a British thing

3/4 of the way through S1 and have a bit of fatigue but generally really enjoying it. It does fit into the 'let's reimagine our teenage years!' hyper-reality fest of the likes of Booksmart (the colours, the eternal summer, the archetypes, the surety of everyone (for which I might mean solidity)) but it's charming, in the true sense of the word, and really well written - even if most of the characters don't give the remotest sense of existing beyond the screen. I do often find myself wondering how the hell they got it commissioned. And how they got Gillian Anderson on board.

Gillian Anderson always seems really good about picking her projects. I remember reading or hearing an interview with her about Hannibal and she chose it/stayed with it because everyone treated her very well.

I was thrilled to see the actors who play Adam and Lily show up in Emma when I saw it a couple of days ago. Got to feel a lot of the cast will be moving onto other big film projects soon too.

I would not have guessed that the actor who plays Eric is 27, while Maeve is clearly 31 (ok, the actress is 24).

Meave always gives me an ilx alum Adam Schefter vibe! Which I enjoy.

ALUMN. Sorry.

Got to feel a lot of the cast will be moving onto other big film projects soon too.

Shall I bring up that once upon a time Otis was Martin Scorsese's Hugo?

And to think I only knew him from some godawful autistic-genius-child film

Oh yeah, he was Ender too.

And how they got Gillian Anderson on board.

She seems to be trying to work close to home as much as possible these days*, and more & more to alternate stylised productions with performances demanding "realism."

* eg The Fall, War & Peace, The Crown, this, Bleak House, Moby Dick, Streetcar Named Desire and All About Eve, quitting American Gods when Fuller & Green were fired, quitting X-Files definitively after the second reunion album...

Otis is in The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas too!

Can we talk about the relationship between Eric and his father which contrasts smartly with that of Adam and his father? Key episode was the one where Adam and his father are dressed almost identically, at the same time Eric is as far away stylistically from his dad as possible, yet his father is the one who’s caring and empathetic. Subverted expectations in that despite his strong faith, he was the one showing tolerance and understanding. Not sure why he didn’t feature in S2.

The little speech Eric’s dad gave him right before the dance.... I lost it.

v impressive how in S1 they didn’t tie up what happened to Eric in an episode or two. The reverberations continue for a long, long time.

I liked the bit when one of Amy's friends slapped her ham sandwich out of her hand and she went 'My ham!'

also i think it might be genuinely educational for a younger audience too?

Definitely. This show is full of great advice

I’m really mad at this stupid show for only having two episodes because I need more. The ending of that last one killed me. Fuck that sneaky MFer who deleted Otis’s vm. Lily is definitely the MVP overall and I would like to be best friends with Eric.

As I just posted in the next flix thread by mistake (3x) Jacob is hot.

yeah. I’m a het man but every time the camera lingers on him for more than a second or two I need to cross my legs

His eyes oof.

i am dying to know about the Jakob 3xs person. I was looking him up under Babylon Berlin?

Rahim was treated dirty in this.

oh derp. Jakob. Yes. The other thread confused me and I thought you had a thing for gingers. yes mf'ing tall swedes for the win.

He coded as Danish to me but we didn't check

yeah i felt legit terrible for rahim - he did everything right and still got the shitty end of the stick

jakob's cocky grin - man, what a dreamboat

i thought danish too and then i checked.

maybe it was playing true to young love where you choose the person that treated you like shit but who at least made the base level amount of apology for it. (eric/adam)

The actor who plays Jakob is vg in (the Swedish, non-Branagh, superior) Wallander; his cocky grin plays a starring role in that but he's handy with his meaty old fists too.

I bet he is.

Ok so very weird but I also thought Danish and was calling him the hot Dane until I looked it up.

Watched s2 on a dull Sunday. It continues to be...fine. I will give them props for making drunk Otis a pure shithead.

God I love this show so much.

All the cars are from the 80s too. And the bikes. And Otis' clothes are straight from photographs of my brothers in the 70s.

And I adore all the houses. So much. And the roads. Em and I talked about moving.

It feels a little like Breaking Bad to me in its own awareness of its status as a TV programme, and the hieightened reality that goes along with that - the colours, the costumes, the sets, that slight air of visual and narrative unrealness that allows the emotions and characters to actually seem even more real.

Adam's arc had me in tears in the last episode about three times.

Honestly I'd probably have liked it more were it not for the final beat with the voicemail. The whole scenario was contrived and shitty in both concept and execution in a way most of the show manages to avoid being.

I didn't like that final beat with the voicemail but I kind of accepted its necessity from a 'setting up s3' pov.

UnMooreddale.

S3E4: We finally see the other teachers at Moordale!

Amy is such as adorable character as is the actor.

Not too spoiler-y, but I'm glad they rescued "Breathe Your Name" for that one scene.

Renewed for a 4th season.

Amy is by far the best.
every scene she is in is just a joy to watch.

Have watched 3 eps of s3 and so far it’s just as great as it ever was. I love what they’ve done with Ruby and the backstory to her brittle bitchiness.

Sven and the coffee machine

The French trip is fucking epic!!

mais oui

So much happens in an episode it’s nuts.

“you were a dick to me all term, you don’t just get to erase that with one phone call”

“but that’s exactly how apologies work”

he’s right, but little does he know, someone else has apologised already, so if she takes this to heart - it is correct - he’s strengthening the case for his rival :/

i don’t know why i put that in italics

Right, just up to them getting on the coach for the French trip. Seeing some flaws in the show the laurel resting or whatever that struck me in the first part of the 2nd series. maybe too much everybody needs to be paired off with somebody all the time.
BUt it is something I'm likely to stick with until at least the end of teh series I'm on. Does seem to have regained some form of balance.
Seemed to be consciously quirky which isn't a good mix in a lot of situations. Formula over nuance and seems to have swung back a bit from there.

just finished it. This show is so incredible. I was basically bawling. If you looked at the scripts on paper it would probably look trite and melodramatic. But these people are REAL. Eric! My god!! Adam! Oh I just want to hug them all.

Not sure how much into spoilers territory I should get here. But a general thing about this show is how relentlessly, brutally moral it is. Characters - eventually - get exactly the amount of happiness and comfort that they've earned. Even if life is unfairer to some than others. You cheat, you lie, you will get dinged for it. Guaranteed. You tell the truth, you come clean - you will be rewarded. Life isn't really like that. But we want it to be like that. And there's just this immense pleasure - and/or dread - of watching comeuppances unfold, or of watching honest graft pay off.

I just got to the end of series 3 last night. Is that the end point? Or is there more due?

S4 is confirmed.

i love this show

otm about eric i love him and his smile so much. adam too, just perfectly portrayed & acted, so human. he even looks like his dad. rahim too, just the best, that whole plot w/ the bus toilet was incredible, his arc w/ adam & poetry was so good. ruby's arc i just loved so much, she became one of my favorite characters

i've never really cared for otis all that much tbh he kind of has that entitled nice guy attitude. like he's major self-centered dick most of the time but occasionally has some good things to say so he wants all this credit. ok dude. you're petty and small much of the time.

i wanted maeve to experience a little more joy in s3, she deserves it bc she has to carry so much. i also wanted her to get w/ isaac instead of otis.

jakob got like 100x hotter in s3 and i can't really handle when he is onscreen bc of it

cal saying to jackson "you understand this would be a queer relationship, right?" was so good that whole scene was so well done

yes

jackson’s confused but interested look, alert, freaked out, trying to be cool, and i’m wanting cal to help him, answer the questions jackson surely has, but that’s so much to put on someone who’s that age and still figuring it out! what, is cal supposed to be the nb queer whisperer guru teacher in addition to everything else? and then they say as much later, listen, it’s enough what i’ve got going on, i can’t carry you. cal deserves some joy too

totally

i feel all of that

something i was confused about was the “school forum”. did that happen? did it happen offscreen? i guess that’s where they made their film and rehearsed the teaches of peaches?

in any case i thought the way that was treated was really unexpected. i was anticipating a real michael clayton style gotcha - the recording played over the PA for all the press to hear. but they didn’t do that. it wasn’t about the head teacher. it was about them. and their movie was.. weird? naff? fuzzed out and amateur? the sound kind of too low, the picture quality bad? they could have made it a clean home run, a triumph, but it was so anarchic and messy and uncomfortable

realised part way through that Adam reminded me of Simon Ritchie / Sid Vicious to look at

Forgive the thread spam, but I wanted to note that this show's 2021 season is nominated in the ILX TV poll, with voting ending this weekend:

ILX's Best Television of 2021 Poll / VOTING AND CAMPAIGNING THREAD / Voting Ends After January 31, 2022

If you like this show and you'd like to see it have a good showing in the poll (running in February) all you need to do is submit a ballot including it and your other favorites (3 minimum, 25 maximum, ranked by your favorite to least favorite) to forksclovetofu at gmail. It'll take five minutes; get to it!

I delayed watching Season 3, I wasn't sure I was ready! But having almost finished it now--did a lot of things get choreographed like REALLY broadly this season? Whole insights and plot developments went by in one or two lines, sometimes feeling like just a device to move things forward? It made the progress seem too easily won, for me. Feels like they painted themselves into a corner with the student forum and then just made it go away. Hope was really well written and played, though, wasn't she?? The terrifying insidiousness of the evil in the guise of respectable banality.

Don't love how Lily's storyline was played. At all.

At the same time I think I laughed more at this season than any other, and Jean continues to be the most relatable character to me by miles and miles, but I also love Eric, he's really the voice of reason and living in your own truth in S3, isn't he? He fought so hard in the first two and he's becoming himself so beautifully.

Jakob is SMOLDERING hot and absolutely infuriating, I want his stuff off my counters too and PLEASE STOP SHOUTING. Aimee is a pure pleasure, the most genuine person. Love every bit of the arc with her and Maeve and their support of each other, how sometimes you get the family you get, and sometimes you get the family you make.

Ahh I love this show so much!

The outro song of the last episode just made my heart explode.

I hope Maeve In America is its own story arc and not an excuse to not have her in the cast all season. I look forward to the consistently execrable American accents (although Cal's is pretty good--oh that's because they're from Minneapolis, which I just looked up!).

dua saleh was great in this, and her music is damn good too

i'm thinking back to lily's story l4urel and yeah it was a bummer.. what specifically didn't you like about it?

I truly thought things were going to take a darker turn. The harm done to Lily was so profound I was worried they were taking it to a self-harm place, esp since she hadn't been to school and didn't know about the student revolt happening. The big musical scene at the same time as Lily was possibly about to hurt herself seemed especially garish and performative. I really thought they were purposefully contrasting Lily's suffering with the other kids getting over-hyped in a spectacle that didn't do anything to heal the students most hurt by Hope's oppression. Like a lot of things this season, I thought big gestures were used in place of character development or a more painstaking plot.

I really like what you said about how moral the show is! You're a much more keen critic of media than I am.

really good posts yall, and voodoo chili is otm about Saleh

I'm sure it's been noted, but Eric's sojourn in Lagos was a wonderful part of the season

SO lovely. I would like them to say more about how he felt seeing his intersecting identities all represented, but I get that they have a lot of story and a growing cast of central-ish characters to get through.

is it wrong that I think of Jakob as dime store Mads?

I definitely do. Of course a dime store Mads is still worth a fortune.

Hm I don't really see it, plus they're from different countries

I thought the same thing, and wish he had been cast as a wink to their Hannibal relationship.

Eric Is The New Dr. Who!

Amazing

Lily & Ola depart:

https://ew.com/tv/sex-education-tanya-reynolds-exits-series-before-season-4-lily/?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgJotJx8Iio

Final Season Drops September 21st

Trailer NSFW

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WldgrH9SvbE

Saw that it dropped last night, not seen any of it yet.
Had assumed that Ncuti having been cast in another significant role might have meant it was over.
But looking forward to watching it.

The reviews are not good, but I'm looking forward to checking in with our old pals anyway.

Have watched first episode. Lots of changes but still great. Absolute ROFL at one bit.

Oh man, that Ep 4 cold open...

https://www.businessinsider.com/look-inside-sex-education-house-up-for-sale-otis-jean-2023-10

The iconic house from the hit Netflix show "Sex Education" has gone on the market for £1.5 million, or around $1.8 million.

The Norwegian-inspired chalet, which is located in the English village of Symonds Yat in the Wye Valley, dates back to 1912 when it was used as a salmon fishing lodge, real estate agent Knight Frank's website says.

I thought this season was mostly good, but the extended descent into metaphysical nonsense absolutely had me rolling my eyes. Mostly satisfied with the ending though.

I keep seeing Ncuti here and wondering how or if it is going to tie in with his performance as the Doctor. Nit really seen the breadth of hys talent since I've mainly seen him in this and Barbie and I'm not sure that's even a shaped part.

I spent some time in the Wye Valley this past summer. It is absurdly beautiful.

And if you're in the area, make sure to visit the cute little tourist town filled with bookstores, Hay-on-Wye, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hay-on-Wye

I found the liberal plot points gish gallop to be delightful and how zero characters ever pushed back on any of it whatsoever at any point