Still, it’s hard to avoid reluctantly crossing out the A* and giving this term’s effort a B+. The series covers a lot of ground – as well as the emotional and hormonal journeys we also see how disability and poverty hamper people’s ability to use their talents and intelligence to the full, the importance of heritage and racial identity and the difficulties of navigating so many streams as they cross, and much more.
There’s also the introduction of non-binary student Cal Bowman (Dua Saleh, in one of the most assured debuts I’ve ever seen) with whom Jackson (Kedar Williams-Stirling) feels an immediate bond but must work out for himself exactly what that bond comprises. Apart from the Eric-Adam storyline, other highlights include the developing relationship between Maeve (Emma Mackey) and Isaac (George Robinson, another standout performer since he joined in season two). New headteacher Hope (Jemima Kirke) is virtually a Disney-style villainess whose unconvincing – and even in non-Sex Education terms, unoriginal – backstory does nothing to humanise or complicate.Īll that said, a sub-par Sex Education is still a good and joyful thing. The focus is wider (Jean and Jakob’s is one of the many adult relationships given more attention, and there are more students introduced too) and perhaps as a result the strokes are broader. The various sexual escapades, which were once just the gateway to exploring character and mining deeper truths, increasingly seem like an end in themselves.īonding … Kedar Williams-Stirling as Jackson Marchetti and Dua Saleh as Cal. Every episode used to speed by but now each one feels very much its full hour long. There are several points at which the pedagogy the programme has avoided for so long creeps in – Amy’s vulvar education and passing on of her new wisdom being the most obvious.
Every momentary miscommunication is almost immediately identified, interrogated and resolved, which is nice for them but unrewarding for the viewer. The script is less fleet, less funny and the therapy-speak that was once Otis’s province (for credible reasons, being the son of a sex therapist) seems to have infected the whole student body. The two actors, in a uniformly brilliant cast, are phenomenal.Įlsewhere, though, the tone is increasingly off, the magic diminished. Eric (Ncuti Gatwa) and Adam’s (Connor Swindells) relationship is the spine of the eight-episode run, and this part of the programme doesn’t put a foot wrong across all the emotional terrain it covers. But the formula is so precise that its blending amounts almost to alchemy, and this series doesn’t work quite as well as the previous two.
0 kommentar(er)
