*This Article May Contain Spoilers*
With its 70’s aesthetic vibe and likeable characters, it’s no surprise that Sex Education became a popular show soon after its release on January 11th.
The show received praise from critics and fans about how they delved into topics that would normally be taboo and not talked about so openly. With a range of sexual problems looked at, the series shows the physical and emotional parts of relationship and sex that can happen to a person.
The show centres around 16-year-old Otis Milburn, a sexually repressed teenager whose mother is a sex and relationship therapist, who is very open with the subject and isn’t afraid to talk to anyone about it, including to her son. So, we see a lot of his problems but also how he deals with other people problems and his perspective on each situation.
Otis, alongside witty outcast Maeve Wiley, set up a sexual health clinic in their school to give out advice, and as a way to make money, to students in the school about their sex lives. It is here where the conversations about sex education are shown.
The pair deal with a lot of students who were all going through their own problems. This meant that there are a variety of topics talked about, from erectile dysfunction to female masturbation. Through Otis’ advice, he is essentially teaching not only the characters in the show but also the people watching.
As well as discussing sex and relationship the show also opens up an important conversation about mental health.
The most prominent cases are Otis and Adam Groff. Throughout the 8-episode season, Groff shows many signs of having poor mental health, mostly shown through his actions, his anger and the relationship he has with his father, who is the headmaster of the school.
When we see Adam interacting with his father it is never positive. His father nearly always looked down on him and talked down to him and they had a strained relationship and are not close. The show also deals with Otis’ mental health, the main one they deal with is Otis’ anxiety and how that affects his own sexual behaviour.
One situation that Sex Education shows is Adam and his relentless teasing of Eric. Adam would push him against the locker, steal from him and call him insulting and degrading names such as ‘Tromboner’ and ‘fag’. This went on for a lot of the season until the end where it comes out that Adam is a closeted gay man, and had feelings for Eric but was projecting his feelings for him and his repressed sexuality through bullying.
Sex Education has started conversations in both sex and mental health, which is important as most people go through both in their lives. But the show does it in a way that is funny and charming that it doesn’t even seem like they are talking about taboo subjects. It’s normalised, which is needed with these topics so that more people talk about them.