'Sex Education' Trailer: A Netflix Comedy About A Reluctant Teenage Sex Therapist

Remember Charlie Bartlett, the 2007 high school movie that starred Anton Yelchin as a teen therapist who dishes out advice and prescription drugs to become popular? The new eight-episode Netflix series Sex Education seems to be a sort of British riff on that film, with Asa Butterfield (Ender's Game, Hugo) playing a kid who offers sex therapy to his classmates in order to gain social status at his own school. Check out the first trailer below.

Anything that contains the legendary Gillian Anderson (The X-Files) encouraging someone to "start by telling me the earliest memory of your scrotum" can't be all bad, right? I certainly hope not, even if this show does feel awfully familiar. But apparently that familiarity is part of the point, since Netflix describes the series as "a contemporary British love letter to American high school TV shows." But will it be able to carve out enough of an identity to stand out on its own, or will it fall into the endless stream of Netflix oblivion?

This is the first TV series for creator/writer Laurie Nunn, and each episode of the season is directed by either Ben Taylor (Catastrophe) or up-and-comer Kate Herron.

Here's the poster:

Oliver Lyttelton, a writer over at fellow movie blog The Playlist, has heard good things about these scripts, so perhaps there's more than meets the eye to this series:

Have been hearing for ages that the scripts for this are killer – can't wait to see the whole thing. https://t.co/Ua06qXE4yY

— olilyttelton (@olilyttelton) January 2, 2019

Here's the official synopsis:

Otis Milburn (Asa Butterfield) is an inexperienced, socially awkward high school student who lives with his mother, Jean (Gillian Anderson), a sex therapist.  Surrounded by manuals, videos and tediously open conversations about sex, Otis is a reluctant expert on the subject. When his home life is revealed at school, Otis realizes that he can use his specialist knowledge to gain status. He teams up with Maeve (Emma Mackey), a whip-smart bad-girl, and his best friend Eric (Ncuti Gatwa) and together they set up an underground sex therapy clinic to deal with their fellow students' weird and wonderful problems. Through his analysis of teenage sexuality, Otis realises he may need some therapy of his own.

All eight episodes of Sex Education's first season will be streaming on Netflix starting January 11, 2019.