Farewell to the most embarrassing show of the decade, Sex Education
Sex Education calls it a day, and Kim Kardashian makes her scripted series debut.
Sex Education
Netflix
Farewell to Sex Education. One of the best — and most excruciatingly embarrassing — TV shows of the decade will come to an end after five years.
For those yet to be initiated: Asa Butterfield stars as Otis, the 16-year-old who, despite being a stiflingly repressed virgin, is roped into starting a sex clinic for his high-school peers on the advice of the gorgeous, goth new girl Maeve (Emma Mackey) — who is also Otis’s love interest.
This knowledge of all things knocking boots is something he picked up by virtue of living with his mother, a sex therapist played by Gillian Anderson. For her, nothing is TMI and boundaries do not exist. The house is full of erotic art a la The Big Lebowski.
That’s basically the story, but it’s the supporting characters, and their subplots that you will fall in love with: Ncuti Gatwa (the newest Dr Who) plays Eric, Otis’s best mate, a gay man navigating his sexuality and his faith in a religious Nigerian family; Lily (Tanya Reynolds) an unrepentantly horny sci-fi geek, who directs a stonking, tentacled take of Romeo and Juliet for the school play; and Adam (Conor Swindells), the dimwit bully with a secret heart of gold.
The final season will see the characters join a new college after the closure of their former school, and for the first time, go their separate ways.
American Horror Story: Delicate
Binge
Is Kim Kardashian about to have her Gloria Swanson moment? The reality TV star will take on the role of a faded actress turned A-list publicist in her scripted series debut, American Horror Story: Delicate.
It’s the 12th instalment of Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuck’s (Nip Tuck/Glee) horror anthology, which started with a bang in 2011 with the Jessica Lange and Evan Peters-led Murder House, and has gone savagely downhill in the years since. Kardashian stars opposite Emma Roberts and Matt Czuchry, a couple trying to conceive. So desperate is Roberts for a baby that she subjects herself to some Cronenberg-y fertility treatment from a shady doctor played by Cara Delevingne.
The Lazarus Project
Stan
Not to be confused with the Aleksandar Hemon novel of the same name, or the dreadful Olivia Wilde film The Lazarus Effect — although it does have something in common with the latter, in the way that it is about ordinary people playing God. Paapa Essiedu (best known for his role in Michaela Coel’s I May Destroy You) plays George, an app developer who is stuck in a recursion of time. George will live six months of his life, in which his girlfriend gets pregnant and the world is ravaged by the pandemic, then poof! It’s back to July 1.
He is starting to lose his marbles, having gone through the time loop twice, when he learns of The Lazarus Project, a covert operation that can turn back the clock in order to undo “mass extinction events” that have ended the world, ie: a nuclear war between Russia and America. If you don’t like time travel, and find Groundhog Day loops a drag, sit this one out.
If you lapped up Russian Doll, there’s something here for you. Those that watched Giri/Haji will be prepared for the intense whiplash of this story — both were written by Joe Burton.
Prey
Stan/Britbox
It‘s good practice to keep a British police procedural drama in your pocket for those times when you don’t have the energy to find something to watch and want guaranteed thrills that feel intelligent but don’t actually require that much thinking. Prey, which was released back in 2014, ticks all the boxes: it’s well acted, windingly plotted, appropriately bloody, and stars Craig Parkinson, who played the bent copper in Line of Duty, again, reprising his role as a bent copper.
To keep it as brief and vague as possible: John Simm stars as wronged copper Marcus, who has been framed and banged up for a crime he did not commit.
Miraculously, he manages to escape custody, and he spends the rest of the series on the run, determined to prove his innocence. Rosie Cavaliero is top-notch as the Snickers bar-hoovering DS charged with tracking him down. What this show lacks in profundity, it makes up for in pure, pulse-pounding pleasure.
The Night Manager
Prime
In this flashy adaptation of John le Carré’s first post-Cold War novel, Tom Hiddleston plays Jonathan Pine, a former British soldier turned hotel manager who is recruited by the secret service to worm his way into the circle of the so-called “worst man in the world” — arms trader Richard Roper (Hugh Laurie). Laurie’s performance, though delightful, doesn’t exactly scream godless villain — likely because he and his inner sanctum bring to mind the murderous gays who attempted to swindle Jennifer Coolidge for her money in the second season of The White Lotus.
This is a capably made, entertaining yet imperfect series.
It certainly launches into action faster than the BBC’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy — but at the expense of atmosphere.
Other elements certainly compensate: It looks gorgeous (you’d hope so, it cost $50m to make); stars Olivia Colman, bless her, as a sharpshooting intelligence operative and Australian actress Elizabeth Debicki as Roper’s disturbed mistress.
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