The first season of Netflix’s Sex Education was a pleasant surprise, to say the least. A coming-of-age comedy that was raunchy, funny, heartfelt, and surprisingly mature was unexpected, though, in retrospect, with a cast that includes Gillian Anderson and Asa Butterfield, it was probably unlikely the series was going to be a shallow remix of teen sex comedies from the ‘80s and ‘90s. So, instead of a shallow recreation of American Pie or Revenge of the Nerds, series creator Laurie Nunn delivered a smarter, kinder, and all-around funnier story of teenagers wracked with hormones and uncontrollable emotions. 

It helps that Nunn and her writers have a remarkable supporting cast around Otis (Butterfield) and Jean Milburn (Anderson), including Otis’s best friend Eric (Ncuti Gatwa) and his partner in unlicensed sex therapy, Maeve (Emma Mackey). But even beyond such major players, Sex Education has a remarkably deep bench of fascinating and compassionately rendered young adults, including misunderstood bully Adam (Connor Swindells), misunderstood all-star athlete Jackson (Kedar Williams-Stirling), misunderstood charmer Aimee (Aimee Lou Wood), and misunderstood graphic (very graphic) artist Lily (Tanya Reynolds). 

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With its talented ensemble, Sex Education has an almost absurd amount of storylines and fascinating characters at its disposal. The risk, then, is that the series will commit the sin of trying to do too much at once, weaving in and out of various stories and character arcs with such frequency that the season itself becomes a tangled mess. Fortunately, as it was with season 1, that’s not the case. Despite what is an expanded cast list and a more equitable share of screen time spread out among characters both new and old, season 2 doesn’t lose what made the show so much fun the first time around, even while it’s actively avoiding a retread of the same ground it covered roughly a year ago. 

Gillian Anderson in Sex Education Season 2 Netflix

Rather than double down on the sex therapy clinic run by Otis and Maeve, season 2 finds a new role for Jean, one that puts the actual sex therapist in her son’s school to answer students’ questions. The awkward mother-son dynamic was one of the best parts of the first season, and here the series finds an opportunity to give Anderson more to do that directly involves her son, but without forcing the two into hackneyed situations of surface-level conflict. As a result, Otis, Eric, and Maeve are then free to have more challenging arcs of their own, most of which revolve around their romantic feelings (or not) for each other or some of their classmates. 

Maeve’s unresolved feelings for Otis cause problems for his nascent relationship with Ola (the terrific Patricia Allison), which is already strained due to Jean dating Ola’s father Jakob (Mikael Persbrandt) now being out in the open. Meanwhile, Eric’s unresolved feelings for Adam clash with his own burgeoning relationship with a French transfer student, Malek (Armin Karima). There’s quite a lot to juggle, and though it seems at times that Sex Education will collapse under the weight of its various threads, the series never once falters. 

Tanya Reynolds and Patricia Allison in Sex Education Season 2 Netflix

Instead, it remains remarkably consistent in terms of its tone. Not overly serious nor glib with regard to its subject matter, Sex Education consistently strikes the right balance between raunchy fun and sweetly endearing teen comedy. That’s a difficult line to walk, as the series’ subject matter (it’s right there in the title) makes it incredibly easy for things to go awry. This seems readily apparent at the beginning of the new season, as the first episode is largely concerned with Otis discovering the joys of masturbation, while at the same time learning a valuable lesson on the power of moderation. 

There’s a meta-textual element at play that again demonstrates the degree to which the writers are attuned to the particular needs of the series and how best to modulate them. And while self-control is an issue for many of the show’s young characters, the series proves time and again it is master of its own domain. That domain, as it turns out, is not just funny and heartfelt, but also conscious about matters of inclusivity, all of which make Sex Education season 2 a rare treat and welcome addition to the glut of incoming 2020 television. 

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Sex Education season 2 premieres Friday, January 17 on Netflix.