Seeing as we’ve all got that new term feeling, it feels appropriate that Netflix’s smash hit TV series Sex Education is back on our screens. While most of us can agree that our schooldays were in no way the best years of our lives, watching Otis, Eric, Maeve and the rest of the Moordale School gang play out theirs is way more entertaining. Plus, of course, there are the myriad joys of the show’s eclectic, cinematic soundtrack.
In common with not quite being able to place where Moordale actually is – it looks like one of those vast American high schools, and it seems to be permanently summer, in the way that the John Hughes films of the 80s did – the soundtrack follows suit. It’s a brilliantly put together mash up of 70s, 80s, 90s and more – together with original tracks by US rocker Ezra Furman.
To celebrate the launch of season four, we thought we'd take a trip down memory lane and explore season three. There are almost 60 tracks featured in the eight-episode series, so what songs appear in the soundtrack of Sex Education season three? But before we dive in, why not catch up on what happened during season two, courtesy of besties Otis and Eric?
The new season opens in the style we’ve come to expect from the show – with a montage of everyone having a damn good time – whether that’s with a partner, themselves, or even through a spot of cybersex, set to The Rubinoos’ ‘I Think We’re Alone Now’. There’s a strong theme of experimentation and exploration running through the series, as Otis (Asa Butterfield) tries out no-strings sex with school Queen Bee Ruby (Mimi Keene) – together with a hilarious, thankfully short-lived moustache he’s spent the whole summer growing; head student Jackson (Kedar Williams-Stirling) becomes close to new, non-binary character Cal (Dua Saleh); Adam (Connor Swindells) and Eric (Ncuti Gatwa) negotiate the choppy waters of their relationship and Otis’s mother, Jean (Gillian Anderson) juggles publicising her new book with a pregnancy and wondering whether she and the baby’s father, Jakob (Mikael Persbrandt) can make a go of it as a family, despite their myriad differences (and the fact that she’s already broken his heart once.)
Not to mention the small matter of whether Otis will find out that Maeve (Emma Mackey) never actually got his voicemail declaring his love for her at the end of the last season – and would it make a difference if they both find out that Isaac (George Robinson) deleted it?
The flipside of season three’s experimentation is the regime brought in by new headmistress Hope Haddon (played by Girls’ Jemima Kirke). She’s desperately trying to rescue the reputation of the establishment that’s become known in the local press as ‘Sex School’ because of last season’s rumoured chlamydia outbreak and the racy end of term Romeo and Juliet: The Musical. Whilst the students initially think she’s cool, as she sashays onto the stage at assembly to ‘Land of 1000 Dances’ by Wilson Pickett, it’s not to last.
Everyone must walk the corridors in single file and – horrors, there’s now a uniform? Needless to say, out goes eager teacher Colin Hendricks’ (Jim Howick) school swing band’s rendition of Canadian singer Peaches’ NSFW, and very definitely not safe for any school other than Moordale ‘F**k the Pain Away’, and in comes a school song in Latin.
However, you can’t keep a good song (that’s also been covered by Dave Grohl and Bat for Lashes, and featured everywhere from 30 Rock to The Handmaid’s Tale, as well as in Lost in Translation and horror film My Little Eye) down, and it features again in episode seven’s orchestrated rebellion by the students.
Sex Education’s music supervisor, Matt Biffa, told Newsweek recently that director Ben Taylor’s view was that Hendricks was letting the a cappella group make their own choice, and ‘bearing in mind that there’s the rebellion later on, it just has to be outrageously filthy and so we didn’t have to go on too much of a mental journey to come up with that one.’
What else helps Biffa to choose the show’s tracks? He said that he and the team ‘are just trying to do right by the characters and then always at the back of our minds there is the overarching message of the show.’ He’s always aiming to ‘touch people emotionally’ with the music, so that they respond to the show’s themes.
In season three, the themes range from identity to boundaries, being daring to feeling shame, the trauma that Aimee (Aimee Lou Wood) is still feeling from her sexual assault in season two, navigating being unemployed and homeless with a pending divorce (beleaguered ex-headmaster Mr Groff, played by Alistair Petrie), and motherhood in all its forms. As well as, of course, the usual panics about the characters’ sex lives, who’s said what to whom and the importance of friendship.
The accompanying tracks span everything from Doris Day’s ‘Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps’ (as Eric tries out make up on Adam), to 80s classic ‘Save a Prayer’ by Duran Duran and KRS One’s ‘Sound of da Police’, which plays out as Hope announces her draconian new school uniform mandate. ‘Tender’ by Blur soundtracks Ruby telling Otis she loves him, and then there’s a selection of French classics to accompany the students on a hilariously disastrous trip to France. There can’t be many TV shows that could expertly segue from Sacha Distel’s ‘Allez donc vous fair bronzer’ to Technotronic’s ‘Pump Up the Jam’, as Hendricks leads a singalong on the coach, but Sex Education nails it.
Plus, as Eric goes on a family trip to Nigeria, there are tracks from Fela Kuti (‘Oyejo’), Prince Nico Mbarga and Orlando Julious Ekemonde to add to the mix.
Sex Education’s balance of humour, drama and emotion, as both the adults and the teens work their way through their love lives, and life in general, make it the box-set you just have to binge.
As for our favourite tracks across the series? We’d have to say Eric joyously lipsyncing to ‘Nails, Hair, Hips and Heels’ by Todrick Hall as he preps for a double date; Kelis’s ‘Milkshake’ accompanying Viv (Chinenye Ezedu) and her mystery (it turns out super-hot) boyfriend Eugene (Reece Richards) arriving at the Moordale gates, and the gorgeous ‘I Get Along Without You Very Well’ by Chet Baker as the backdrop to a poignant break-up (no spoilers as to which pair is involved, but tears were shed.) Aimee Mann’s beautiful ‘Save Me’ – originally from the Magnolia soundtrack – is used in the final episode over a montage of another break-up, Maeve packing for a potentially life-changing trip, Rahim (Sami Outalbali) reading a touching poem written by Adam, and Adam competing with his dog, Madam, at a dog agility trial.
It’s another triumphant season of Sex Education, so hats off to the whole team, but especially music supervisor Matt Biffa, who’s made us dance, laugh and cry throughout with his choices. Roll on season four!
Looking for a similarly eclectic TV soundtrack? We have hundreds of expertly-chosen playlists, from romance to drama, action to suspense, in our catalogue.
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