When you were a teenager, did you receive “the talk” from your parents? From conversations that I’ve held with my friends, it seems that adults would rather do anything but discuss sex with their kids. However, Gillian Anderson’s character doesn’t hold back in Netflix’s Sex Education trailer while talking to her son, played by Asa Butterfield. She casually asks whether he wants to discuss masturbation, and of course, he really doesn’t want to go there with mother. And when a friend wistfully tells him, “I wish my mom was a sex guru,” Otis replies, “Trust me, you don’t.”
The show’s synopsis reveals that Otis is the typically socially awkward teenager whose sex-therapist mother has made it a lifelong point to keep her son fully informed through “tediously open conversations.” Otis finally discovers an advantage to this horror show to “gain status” among his peers, and from the scenes that flash through the trailer, it’s apparent that the series will straddle both ends of the dramedy spectrum. More synopsis goodies:
Otis realizes that he can use his specialist knowledge to gain status. He teams up with Maeve, a whip-smart bad-girl, and together they set up an underground sex therapy clinic to deal with their fellow students’ weird and wonderful problems. Through his analysis of teenage sexuality, Otis realises he may need some therapy of his own.
Honestly, growing up surrounded by “helpful” sex education manuals sounds like the perfect recipe for abstention. Anderson plays up her role in an almost clinical manner, and Butterfield appears to be appropriately mortified. Even though this trailer isn’t otherwise compelling, this series should be a decent binge watch because teen-focused content can’t seem to lose on Netflix.
Sex Education will premiere on January 11, 2019.
