Sex Education Review

The tone is the achievement. This is a show about teenagers and sex that is filthy, funny and almost never cruel, and its central discipline is that nobody's problem is treated as a joke once the joke has landed. Gillian Anderson is superb as a therapist who cannot stop diagnosing her own child, Ncuti Gatwa's Eric is written with a warmth that resists every stereotype the part invites, and the eighth episode of the second season, in which the women of the school are locked in detention together and one of them describes an assault, is a genuinely great half hour.

The look is deliberately unreal, autumn colours, a valley of green hills and a school that is a mixture of American letter jackets and British sixth form, which some viewers find charming and others find placeless. It weakens as it goes. The third season loses focus among a large cast, and the fourth relocates to a new college, writes out several favourites and gives its remaining stories a rushed, obligatory quality.