Sex Education Isn’t About Sex At All: it’s about emotional intelligence

Season three of Sex Education is nothing short of exceptional. While its first episode worried me a little that it was choosing sensationalism over depth rather than portent of decline it was exactly the opposite. Sex Education has matured beyond its first two wonderful seasons with each episode constructing and developing individual character arcs like instruments in a symphony, building towards a crescendo that makes the heart sing. If Episode One felt like a choppy start, by Episode Seven it was literally singing. The result was both sensational, and sensational — and if there is such a thing as “the perfect episode”, Episode Severn of Season Three of Sex Education is it (the final episode of Six Feet Under notwithstanding). Spoilers follow.

You would think it difficult to have so many different characters in a single piece while enabling all of them to maintain a kind of dimensionality: but Sex Education succeeds in doing just that. In fact, the de-facto protagonist pair, Maeve and Otis, and their Groundhog Day “will they won’t they” routine (which my generation may refer to as the “Sam and Diane“) was pretty much the least interesting of all the arcs — putting what may be understood as the secondary characters front of…