SEX EDUCATION REVIEW: A British heartfelt comedy filled with sex education…

This Netflix show about life for the son of a sex therapist could so easily have been embarrassing. Instead, it is a glorious, heartfelt, funny creation and the show understands that teens are silly and clumsy about sex.

And so are adults.

 ABOVE: Embarrassing parents … Asa Butterfield and Gillian Anderson in Sex Education.

As conversations you don’t want to have as a teenage boy with your mother go, one that begins “Sweetheart – I’ve noticed you’re pretending to masturbate” is right up there. But such is your lot when you are 16-year-old Otis (Asa Butterfield) and your mother is Jean (Gillian Anderson), a sex therapist whose work has brought enough unwanted knowledge into the home to have turned you off sex – even sex with yourself – for life.

Otis has been planting evidence of standard teenage behavior in his room to avoid maternal attention in this matter. But he can’t masturbate. His adolescent anxiety about his body (he’s not crazy about erections, either) is intensified by the constant T.M.I. a factor of living with an oversharing parent in a house with erotic art on the walls and exotic implements in the drawers.

Poor Otis.

But beleaguered Otis has picked up a lot through osmosis. When he talks a classmate through an uncomfortable sex issue (Viagra is involved), his friend and secret crush, badass, Maeve (Emma Mackey), convinces him to set up a side gig as a “sex and relationship therapist” when she spots a lucrative opportunity to charge for the sex counseling skills he has unavoidably absorbed in a marketplace of anxious and furiously active teenagers..

Those who can’t do it, teach.

It’s a far-fetched premise, as even Otis’s clients admit, but living with Jean has given him a specific skill set and perceptiveness, and somehow he and the show sell it.

But it’s an effective introduction to the ways that Otis, Maeve and Otis’ best friend, Eric (Ncuti Gatwa), discover just how frightened and ill-equipped most of their classmates are to deal with this topic. Much of Otis’ advice winds up being not about technique but about the emotions underlying each new problem.

Mackey, Gatwa and the rest of the young cast all find deeper layers to the familiar types they’re playing, even the mean girls (and boy) clique called the Untouchables. And then we have subplots and plots and devious schemes and just sheer fun with the lives of the cast of unbelievable, funny characters.

STEP UP, GILLIAN ANDERSON:

“Sex Education’s” biggest name on screen might be Anderson (whose Twitter bio now proclaims her to be a “shag specialist”), but this is a story about the kids. Because one of the best things about this show is the fact that so many of these characters do feel like kids — not 30-something adults acting like kids, but scrambling teenagers who don’t really know how they feel about anything — they just know they feel it.

All that said, the adults don’t seem to have things any more figured out than the kids, as largely represented by Jean, whose avoidance of real relationships in favor of casual sex serves as her primary storyline; that, and finding new ways to embarrass Otis comprise the majority of her screen time, but it does allow Anderson to stretch in new and exciting ways.

Anderson’s resume, beyond “The X-Files,” is packed largely with serious period dramas and other roles which don’t require her to smile or have much in the way of fun. (The most notable exception, of course, being her Emmy-worthy shapeshifting in Season 1 of “American Gods.”) Here, though, in Sex Education, she’s perhaps the loosest she’s ever been on screen, leaning into both Jean’s charming awkwardness and her intellectual pride.

Jean recedes into the background after a while, but Anderson — sporting a fabulous platinum coif, a variety of low-cut jumpsuits and the English accent she used on The Fall is a comic delight. (Her enthusiastic delivery of the phrase “man milk” will stay with you wherever you go.)

FINAL THOUGHTS: