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“Young people don’t want to be patronized,” she said. “They want to be challenged and told difficult stories.”

The series’s straightforward approach to sex is also particularly timely, given increasing cultural awareness about the unrealistic male fantasies perpetuated by online porn.

“It’s tackling different sexual topics with an honesty I don’t think I’ve seen elsewhere, embracing the awkwardness of teenagers’ first exploring themselves as sexual beings,” said Ita O’Brien, the show’s intimacy coordinator. (In his review of “Sex Education” for The Times, the TV critic James Poniewozik wrote that “sex, in this show, isn’t an ‘issue’ or a problem or a titillating lure: It’s an aspect of health.”)

Nunn acknowledged that working on the new season during a pandemic has not been easy. But she has found comfort in the show’s comedy, which helps her stave off the “constant sense of low-level anxiety and dread in the air that is difficult to ignore,” she said.

As a writer, Nunn added, she is accustomed to working mostly in isolation. And that work continues to feel necessary.

“The main message of the show is the importance of honest communication,” she said. “Hopefully that will always be something worth writing about.”

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By Hank Stuever 

So they base it on sex. This is another aspect to the show that is perfectly handled, even if some viewers might find it bracingly frank. Hats off to the show’s intimacy coordinator on this one — the intimacy has not only been duly coordinated, it transcends anything that might get in its way. (In other words, they’re beautiful and it’s beautiful. Enjoy!)

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By Michael Pickard

It’s impossible to imagine a sword fight or a battle scene being filmed without actors spending many hours choreographing and rehearsing the action in detail beforehand. Similarly, a dance routine would also be the subject of meticulous planning before being recorded.

So, why is the way sex scenes are filmed only now coming under greater scrutiny? For the past few years, intimacy coordinator Ita O’Brien (pictured top on set) has spearheaded a shift in the industry and led a new approach to intimacy on screen, one that invites greater communication and transparency during filming, puts in place a structure that allows for agreement and consent between actors and directors and that allows time for intimate scenes to be choreographed clearly.

“In the past, there wasn’t a sense of bringing a professional structure to the intimate work,” she explains, speaking during a keynote session at the Berlinale Series Market in February. “If you had a fight, you certainly wouldn’t just say, ‘Okay, we’ll hand you the swords and then just go for it.’ That wouldn’t be reasonable as you’re in severe danger of an injury happening. So you make sure a stunt coordinator or a fight director is there; they teach techniques and they choreograph the fight content. They will have spoken to the director and made sure they’re serving the director’s vision. If there’s a dance, of course, you’re not going to just talk about it and then throw the people on and say, ‘Right, just do the tango.’ You’re going to have a choreographer, who’s going to listen to the director, hear their vision, choreograph clearly and then make sure you create a scene that serves the storytelling.”

It’s that approach that O’Brien is now bringing to intimate content, having worked on series such as Sex Education, Normal People, Gangs of London, Bulletproof, Pennyworth, Gentleman Jack and Watchmen.

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BY CHLOE LAWS

I’ve not seen sex like this on TV before. There’s no glossy filter. It’s not sanitised. They have a cup of tea before. They have some awkward small talk. They fumble, and laugh, and talk. It’s not fireworks, a bra perfectly falling off, a bottle of champagne open. But just because it isn’t ‘Hollywood’ romantic doesn’t mean it isn’t romantic.

As the series continues, as does their sex life – a perfect illustration of how growing up, and finding yourself, means your tastes change. Marianne, around the age of 21, develops an interest in BDSM. The physicality of their sex changes, but the dialogue never does – it is always judgment-free, and sensitive. Every sex scene in Normal People was guided by an “intimacy coordinator”, Ita O’Brien, to make sure the actors were comfortable – that level of care, on set, shows on screen. O’Brien told The Guardian “It was crucial for me to honour Sally’s writing. There is nothing gratuitous. But there is also a lot of sex.”

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By Britnee Meiser

“It’s really important to be truthful with the nudity,” Daisy explains. “Often it’s not even in a sexual capacity. It’ll be incidental, like Connell coming out of the shower and getting changed, and it just happens to be a moment. But it’s not about [the nudity] at all, it’s just very real to what a relationship is really like.”

Filming such raw sex scenes in Normal People was a new experience for Daisy, and she credits her gripping performance (my words, not hers) to a relaxed on-set environment established by Lenny, who was conscious of having a gender-balanced crew, and Ita O’Brien, the show’s intimacy coordinator. Ita, who has worked on shows like Netflix’s Sex Education and HBO’s Gentleman Jack, stressed the importance of consent and clarity when working through a sex scene, and Daisy said it took all the pressure off. “All Paul and I had to think about were the story beats,” she says. “It was her job to worry about the choreography. She was wonderful, she always made sure that we were comfortable with everything and we felt safe and were well looked after.”

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Listen to the interview with Ita O’Brien on the BBC Radio 4 Today Programme.

The show has an “intimacy coordinator” called Ita O’Brien, who choreographs more explicit scenes. “Nobody is going to be touched anywhere they’re not prepared for. Everyone can speak up in a very open and safe way. I think a lot of the actors have felt empowered by that. It’s made them feel they can be braver in those scenes, because they have that back-up.”

Despite how explicit the show can be, Nunn says she’s never had anyone tell her they were upset. “I think the opening scenes of season one and season two are quite graphic, so if it’s not for you, then you’re probably not going to get to the anal douching bit.” She’s laughing, but she knows that really isn’t what Sex Education is about. “At its heart, the show’s about communication and honesty. There’s a sweetness to it. I think you’d have to work quite hard to get really offended.”

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Interview by Gregory Ellwood

Beyond that, we also worked with a wonderful woman Ita O’Brien, who’s an intimacy coordinator. She has developed a way of talking about and working on intimate scenes. A bit like a stunt coordinator might step in when you’re designing action sequences. This is entirely different in one way but it’s another person who has a way of working safely and positively around that sort of material. Ita came in. She talked to about how she worked [to the cast and crew]. It’s around consent. It’s around how you speak about these things. It’s about openness. It’s around understanding that what you’re doing is representing states of feeling and physical patterns and how that can be done in a way that feels safe and empowering for the people involved. And then myself, Ita and the actors would talk about each sequence and design it together, always having a process of consent and a way [in which] nothing would happen if [the actors] didn’t feel comfortable.

And here’s a big advantage. I think, like a lot of directors, I like to be in control. And I was worried if somebody’s going to get between me and what I need this to be and to feel like as a filmmaker. But actually, it worked in a really positive way. Because the danger for me, I think, if we’d worked the traditional way. The “old way” where you just muddled through in interaction with actors. In fact, as an established director 30-years-older than the actors, I would worry that they feel pressured to do things because they thought I wanted them to. In a way, that would stop me from asking. Because I’d hate to feel like they would feel any pressure because I’d asked. However much I said, “Listen, it’s totally up to you but here’s how I see it.” I was worried that they would not want to say, “Listen, I don’t really feel good about that.” That they wouldn’t want to disappoint me. Having Ita there just meant there’s this other layer. And it means that they have a process and a context in which they can say when they don’t feel right about something or that they would like to think about it a different way. I hope people like the series. But I think one thing you’re going to have to admit if you see it is that those scenes are very natural, feel, I think, very real.

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By Horatia Harrod

When the idea of using an “intimacy co-ordinator” to help figure out the sex scenes was mooted, Abrahamson was dubious. “Part of me thought, when the intimacy co-ordinator comes in, everybody’s going to be swinging from the chandeliers. Or that it would be something that we’re doing as a sop to post-#MeToo film-making — like, a health and safety officer for the bedroom.”

But his scepticism melted away on meeting Ita O’Brien, who trained as a dancer before advising on programmes including Sex Education and Channel 4’s Humans. He credits her with helping his young, relatively little-known actors — Paul Mescal, in his TV debut, and Daisy Edgar-Jones, in her first leading role — to put aside any awkwardness.

“She takes the shyness away, and finds a way of negotiating touch and consent, which is really simple but which always goes back to the actors to make sure that they’re comfortable with what’s happening,” he says. “We did also have such a laugh because she’s got all these videos of different animals, from slugs to snakes to dogs to elephants, making love, so you can say, no, this is more of a sluggy moment. It’s a brilliant way of helping the actors to find an external language for it.”

It says something about Abrahamson that he embraced being disempowered: “The key thing is, if you’re a relatively well-established director, and you’re working with young actors, there is always a worry that the actors will say yes to things because you’re asking them to, and they don’t want to disappoint you. That’s all gone in the context of Ita [O’Brien].”

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By Greg Barradale

In particular, one early sex scene in Normal People – where Connell and Marianne first have sex and Connell says it won’t be awkward if she decides to stop – has won plaudits.

This isn’t an accident. Shows like this use someone called an intimacy co-ordinator. Sex Education did it, and as with that, the sex scenes just seem to land right. Ita O’Brien, who worked on the Normal People production as an intimacy co-ordinator, has revealed the process behind all this.

Sex scenes are planned out in meticulous detail before, using a host of tricks. “I’m bringing in techniques, like holding onto different body parts, looking at what we can push against each other,” O’Brien told The Times.

“You never want to have pubic bone against pubic bone,” said O’Brien.