Gillian Anderson and the Sex Education cast return for a second season. Photo / Supplied
With the Netflix hit Sex Education back for a second series, its writer Laurie Nunn tells Eleanor Halls what's in store this time round.
When Sex Education first aired on Netflix in January last year, the recurring word to describe the coming-of-age comedy drama was "surreal". Created by then-unknown millennial writer Laurie Nunn, the show starred Gillian Anderson as Jean Milburn, a free-spirited sex therapist, alongside a bunch of first-time 20-something actors who play 15-year-olds navigating the perils of teenagedom in bucolic south Wales.
The show was like a glossy brochure for a fictional holiday, with Jean and her emotionally precocious son Otis (Asa Butterfield), who doles out sex education pilfered from his mother to school peers for money, living in an extraordinary Scandinavian-style chalet overlooking the River Wye. Breakfast – no matter the month – is enjoyed on the balcony in gleaming sunshine, and Otis cycles blissfully through the Forest of Dean to a school where children wear varsity jackets and mooch through American locker-filled halls. Last year Nunn said she was inspired by the films of John Hughes, and deliberately sought "that American throwback nostalgia."
Bafflingly, however, there isn't a single Welsh accent to be heard, and, while clearly set in the present day, the show's soundtrack and cultural references are decidedly Eighties, from the sound of The Smiths and A Flock of Seagulls to boys calling each other "mong".
And then there's the sex: while both relentless and explicit, any crudeness is dispelled by hilariously goofy mishaps, incongrous shots of the Welsh countryside and imaginative camerawork. Season one's most memorable scene saw Otis's first successful sexual experience presented as a comically OTT religious encounter, his body hovering in the air and bathed in blinding white light while a choir trilled.
And yet this peculiar show – think Stranger Things meets American Pie – swiftly became one of Netflix's biggest hits, watched by 40 million within the first four weeks, and with a second season beginning next Friday. At once tender, witty and deliciously relatable for millennial and Gen Z viewers, Sex Education went down like a cup of hot cocoa at bedtime. Or, considering its target audience, perhaps a shot of vodka.
It also did the impossible: broaching every "woke" topic of 2019 so humorously and gracefully – from same-sex parenting and homosexuality to consent and cyber sex crimes – that even the most conservative of audience members wouldn't have the heart to roll their eyes.
Marking an industry first, Netflix even hired an "intimacy director" (Ita O'Brien, who's joined by David Thackery for season two) to guide its young stars through the more uncomfortable moments on set, and Nunn hired a "sex educator" for her (largely female) writers' room.
"The sex educator was very helpful in putting forward the issues young people today have questions about, and what they need to know about," says Nunn quietly during our interview at the Rosewood Hotel, cutting a surprisingly timid figure for the creator of one of the frankest and filthiest shows on television.
That explains one of the new season's funniest storylines: a chlamydia outbreak that brings the whole school to a standstill after one teenager claims the infection is contagious through breathing. "The sex educator also told me about vaginismus [when the vagina clamps up during intercourse], and how common it was. So that's something Lily [a friend of Otis] suffers from in the new season."
While the first season was particularly priapic – centring on Otis's fear of masturbation, and the coming-out of the school bully, Adam (Connor Swindells) – the second shifts the focus onto its female characters. We see Maeve (Emma Mackey), a brainy, sharp-tongued feminist with pink hair and little patience for foolishness, battle with her single mother's crack-cocaine addiction, while her best friend Aimee (Aimee Lou Wood) is left traumatised by sexual assault.
Meanwhile, another character begins to feel attracted to her best female friend despite having a boyfriend, and Anderson's character Jean teaches a middle-aged mother in a sexless marriage how to masturbate for the first time. This storyline is especially moving – how often do we see a woman past her prime pleasure herself on screen with no man in sight?
"What was very important for me in the second season was thinking about female desire," says Nunn, who graduated from a Screenwriting MA at the National Film and Television School in 2013. "When I was at school, there was no mention of sex beyond 'You're going to get pregnant and die.' And boys never learned about the female anatomy. I really hope we're going to see a big change in schools soon."
Patricia Allison, who plays a starring role as Otis's new girlfriend Ola in the new season, tells me the show has given her "a real sense of ownership of my body. I talked about female masturbation with the intimacy coordinator, which was a huge de-stigmatisation for me." Wood, who happens to be dating her on-screen boyfriend Adam ("My dad was like, 'Not many people have seen their daughter and her boyfriend simulating sex on television!'") felt the same.
"We used to lie at school and pretend we didn't even know what it was, when in fact we'd be up until two in the morning, getting tired the next day!" she hoots. "I used to hover by the shoots of water in the swimming pools as a child, and then I would feel ashamed, which is sad. Sex education in schools shouldn't just be about having children, it should be OK to learn about sex because you're horny. I honestly think we should have sex therapists at school."
Allison first met Wood and her fellow cast members at a "sex workshop" with the intimacy coordinator Ita O'Brien. "We watched videos of different animals having sex and then we would mimic them and see which ones fit with our characters. It's pretty weird, being like, 'Hi, nice to meet you, I'm Patricia, and now I'm going to imitate a Bonobo monkey having sex!'" Allison laughs. "I loved watching the way the slugs intertwined, but in the end I went with how the cats do it."
O'Brien wasn't always required, however. Asa Butterfield (The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas), whose character Otis spends the majority of season two masturbating on his own – to the point that he worries he's "run himself out" when unable to rise to the occasion during sex – scoffs at the idea. "They did want me to have [the coordinator], but I don't think I need an older woman telling me how I might be breathing or what my facial expression should look like when I'm simulating that on my own." Butterfield also felt that he could figure it all out without an animal prompt.
And did the intimacy coordinator choreograph the sex scenes? "We would build our own choreography using the animals," says Allison. "But she would split us into partners and we would go through every single body part and tell our partner whether we had an issue being touched there. You could say no to everything, if you wanted to.
"Then we practise saying 'yes' and 'no' as if we're lying, so our partners can spot when we're saying yes but we really mean no. It's incredibly helpful, because when intimacy is done badly on set, it can feel like a little bit of your soul has been ripped away from you."
Wood tells me how relieved she was with Nunn's writing. Even two years into the MeToo movement, female characters are still falling short. "They're completely flimsy and 2D. The script notes will say things like, "she's beautiful, but in her own way", or "nerdy but sexy". So I just think, 'How will I ever play this?'
"It just feels amazing to finally get a script where I can go, oh my god, I've said this! I've done this! I've been through this! These are real people."
The second season of Sex Education streams on Netflix from January 17.
The host has been spotted across the Atlantic post-election.