Sex Education 4 Review: the final season of the Netflix TV show
It is since 2019 that I have been arguing at the drop of a hat that, underneath it all, Sex Education is actually a fantasy, and as we get to the fourth and final season, I can be blessed that, in the end, Netflix extended a hand and finally proved me right. With an eye to the future after the successful launch of the live-action One Piece (here is our review of the One Piece TV show), the streaming platform is preparing to say goodbye to the TV shows that have made the fortune of the on-demand entertainment era: looking forward to the final season of Stranger Things, these days it is the turn of Sex Education 4, the acclaimed teen-comedy series that has captivated audiences around the world for its lightness and exquisite simplicity..
Once again starring Asa Butterfield as the aspiring young sexologist Otis Milburn, as well as co-stars Gillian Anderson, Ncuti Gatwa, Aimee-Lou Wood, Emma Mackey, Connor Swindells, Kedar Williams-Stirling, and Mimi Keene, the final season of Sex Education starts with a new beginning: as Moordale High School closes, in fact, Otis and Eric must face their first day at Cavendish Sixth Form College, where the former will encounter some unexpected difficulties in trying to open a new sex clinic, while the latter will try to carve out a space for himself in the school’s ‘coolest’ group, all belonging like him to the LGBTQ+ community, a sign of a society moving forward.
Meanwhile, back in the United States, Maeve is living her dream at the prestigious Wallace University, where she is taking classes from cult author Thomas Molloy. Otis pines for her as he tries to adjust to the fact that he is no longer an only child or the school’s only therapist….
Sex Education 4: a wet ending (of tears)
As the greatest TV shows teach, the first episode of Sex Education 4 opens with what could be the last episode of Sex Education 3, harkening back to moments and situations seen in the previous season’s finale but immediately adding new avenues and insights. As in Harry Potter, it’s back to school after summer vacation, and as mentioned in the opening, the ‘fantasy-like’ atmospheres that surrounded past incarnations of the Netflix teen-comedy-drama are more enhanced this time than ever.
Sex Education in its fourth season continues to have fun in creating a fantasy world adjacent to our reality but at the same time its ideal and idealistic exaltation: a fairy realm – there are even woods, and in a couple of episodes even D…no, we can’t tell – that lands directly in the hyperuranium of adolescence.. These stories and characters seem to populate a fantasy world that is at once an adolescent outlet and refuge, the ultimate idea of a purely televised reality, and a hyperrealist dream from apotheosis about the age most expected by the young and most regretted by the old.
In what is perhaps the only TV show that teenagers everywhere should definitely watch, there is everything a youth dream (today) should have: great characters; good writing; unparalleled lightness leading toward a most felicitous communion between entertainment and education, free to deal with all kinds of topics by purifying them of their pedagogical gravitas, and finally, an unscrupulous propaganda sentiment of the woke culture.. It is no coincidence that the only character endowed with a real evolutionary story arc is Groff (played by the masterful Alistair Petrie), a straight, uptight white male who will necessarily have to evolve to keep up with the times. The society of the future is already in the present, in Sex Education, and it is the past that must adapt.
The gentle and delicate response to the dark extremisms of HBO’s Euphoria is still, for the last time, splendidly valid, with a bittersweet happy ending perfectly in keeping with the times and to be absolutely stocked with tissues…to wipe away your tears, what do you get!
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