Sex Education drops Netflix viewers into one of its lesser-travelled genres - the coming-of-age dramedy.
The eight-episode mini-series follows a group of haphazard teens who are extraordinarily sexually active, and struggling to deal with their new found urges and emotions.
Enter Otis Milburn (played by Asa Butterfield) - the son of famous sex therapist Jean Milburn (Gillian Anderson).
While Otis initially comes across as a cliched awkward protagonist who struggles to fit into any group, the stereotype is quickly left at the door as his character goes on to flourish.
In the first batch of episodes Otis realises he has a knack for diagnosing and helping people with their sexually stimulated emotional issues, which pushes him into the hands of Maeve Wiley (Emma Mackey).
Maeve is the school’s “bad girl” who simply refuses to fit in to any predetermined cliques, and aggressively hates many of her classmates.
After witnessing Otis’s sexual therapy in action she soon drums up a novel idea: The pair of them ought to hold a “sex clinic” to help their peers through their sex - and relationship - problems (for a nominal fee, of course).
But the first issue arises when Otis realises he has developed a crush on Maeve and really struggles to keep it under-wraps.
Meanwhile Otis is also finding his home-life difficult - he can’t bring himself to masturbate, and his mother revealing this secret to her patients isn’t helping.
Asa (best known for Ender’s Game and Miss Peregine’s Home for Peculiar Children) is just excellent as Otis.
He successfully swerves the aforementioned stereotypes which inherently arrive in many coming-of-age films and TV shows, bringing a unique brand of “odd” to the screen which he owns entirely.
Sex Education on Netflix: Most of the show's plots revolve around Otis and Maeve (Image: NETFLIX)
Asa also instantly clicks with the actor portraying his mother, Gillian (X-Files, The Fall, Hannibal, American Gods).
Gillian regularly manages to extend Jean’s professional outlook on sex and human behaviour into her parenting before - naturally - falling into a panicky and prying mother of a teenage boy.
Jean goes on to put herself in a number of suspect situations which force her to explain her dubious actions to Otis - resulting in a constantly spinning revolving door of “which one of us is the parent here?”
Gillian provides a lot of comic-relief throughout the series as she stumbles her way through parenting - however she also undergoes a great deal of growth and progression in the eight episodes, and will absolutely leave viewers rooting for her to - please, God - get something right soon.
The outright best humour in the series is delivered by Otis’s best friend Eric (Ncuti Gatwa).
Eric is one of the few gay men in school and is similarly struggling with his own romantic issues, but is mostly the first person to either help or - more frequently - laugh at Otis during his weird situation.
The first half of the show sees Eric taking a little bit of a back seat within the plot as the focus solely sits upon Otis but his character arc is perhaps the most satisfying and emotional of them all.
