The Big Picture
- Sex scenes in Sex Education serve a storytelling purpose, according to intimacy coordinator David Thackeray, who aims to make sure they exist for a reason.
- The phone sex scene between Otis and Maeve highlights their long-distance relationship, exploring the challenges and intimacy they navigate as young adults.
- Sex is an integral part of Sex Education, revealing deeper aspects of characters' psyches and providing insight into their relationships with intimacy.
This week, Netflix's Sex Education returned for its fourth and final season. The comedy series follows Otis Milburn and his friends as they do their best to navigate family, school, romance, and, of course, sex. In a series like Sex Education, there's no shortage of sex scenes to be found, but something the show aims to do is give those scenes purpose — a noteworthy endeavor as audiences question whether sex scenes are even necessary. For the show's intimacy coordinator David Thackeray, sex scenes can be major storytelling devices.
During an interview with Collider's Chase Hutchinson, Thackeray shares why he thinks sex scenes can be important for advancing story in the same way other scenes are. Of course, they're important for Thackeray as an intimacy coordinator, whose job revolves around helping bring those scenes to life. Building on that, Thackeray says he wants "to make sure these scenes exist for a reason. If it doesn't do anything, if it's literally for the audience's eyes, we just zoom in on a bum or something like that. I'd be questioning why are we doing that?"
One example Thackeray uses to further drive the point home is the phone sex scene between Otis (Asa Butterfield) and Maeve (Emma Mackey) when Maeve is still in America. He delves a bit into why a scene like that is worth showing on-screen, especially considering the ups and downs Maeve and Otis have experienced together throughout the show: "It tells us a lot about them trying to find closeness and intimacy from a long-distance relationship. What it does for us, as an audience, is suddenly we're talking about that. How does a long-distance relationship work? What's the hurdles there that people need to go through or explore and especially as they’re young adults character-wise. So, it's even more heightened for them. It's like intimacy is so new, that kind of context."
Sex in 'Sex Education' Creates Dynamic Characters
Anyone who has watched Sex Education knows that sex is an integral part of the series (if you couldn't guess from the title). There are sex scenes a-plenty across its four seasons — with characters going solo or being intimate with others. However, like Thackeray discusses, every character's relationship with sex unveils something deeper within their psyche. For Otis, his difficulties with sex stem from a fear of being hurt after his father left. Someone like Aimee (Aimee Lou Wood) uses it as a way to heal herself from trauma. In Season 4 specifically, even characters like Michael Groff (Alistair Petrie) receive more insight because of sex scenes. As Thackeray said, "Sex Education is all about making sure the intimacy is for a reason. It's literally the show."
All episodes of Sex Education are streaming now on Netflix.
