Before we’re allowed to return to Moordale, here are some decent alternatives.
In spite of the fact that Netflix confirmed that sparky comedy-drama Sex Education would get a fourth season within days of the debut of its third back in September 2021, it looks like we’ll be waiting a while for it to arrive. Production on the series isn’t due to begin until next month, meaning that even if filming is super speedy, there is no chance the show’s fourth run will air in 2022 and we’re most likely looking at the back end of 2023 before we’ll get a chance to watch it. The show is a huge success now, but when Netflix first launched Sex Education in the very early days of 2019, early reactions were a little confused. It was a comedy-drama, set in a very American-feeling high school with an almost exclusively British cast. Part bawdy comedy, part tender coming-of-age saga, it seemed like it might fall between two stools. It didn’t. Sex Education primarily follows Otis Milburn, a bookish, quiet student at Moordale Secondary School. When we’re first introduced to Otis, he is ambivalent about sex, in part because his single mother Jean is a sex therapist and extremely open about it at home. However, after a couple of chance encounters, he and fellow student Maeve discover there is money, and, more importantly, kudos, in using the expertise Otis has learned from his mother to pass on to the other students. Asa Butterfield stars as Otis, with Gillian Anderson playing Jean and Emma Mackey portraying Maeve. Like teen drama Skins before it, the show has put rocket fuel under the careers of so many of its stars. Butterfield is now a bona fide leading man, Ncuti Gatwa, who plays Eric, Otis’ best pal, is the new Doctor Who, while Mackey is about to play Emily Bronte for Warner Brothers and has a key role in the new Barbie movie. Perhaps that explains why the show has taken so long to get its cast together for a fourth season. With that in mind, to help you pass the time until the fourth season of Sex Education arrives, we thought we’d have a think and recommend seven shows that manage to harness the power of youthful lust and use it to get laughs, heartfelt moments and real drama. Awkward walked so Sex Education could run when it debuted on MTV back in 2011. The show followed Ashley Rickards’ Jenna Hamilton, who we first meet after two big events. Firstly, she has finally managed to bag her crush, Matty McKibben, in a heated tryst at summer camp, but he then reveals he won’t be seen with her as soon as they get back to high school. Secondly, after a freak accident in her bathroom, which is mistaken for a suicide attempt, she becomes notorious among her fellow students. We follow Jenna as she tries to navigate these choppy waters, all the while maintaining a blog to help her figure it out.
