Heartstopper season three review – the sex scenes are handled as delicately as fine china | Television & radio

The kids of Heartstopper are growing up, so this lovely, almost absurdly wholesome drama must grow up with them. The third season of the TV adaptation of Alice Oseman’s enormously popular graphic novels follows much the same path as its predecessors. The central couple, Nick (Kit Connor) and Charlie (Joe Locke), are still together – and considering taking their relationship to the next level. Viewers may be surprised to learn that, initially, this involves saying that they love each other. When Charlie’s sister, Tori (Jenny Walser), points out her shock that they haven’t done so already, she speaks for all of us. I was tempted to go back to check.

I wonder if this sense of the relationship being more advanced than it is speaks to the fact that some of the stars have broken out on to a far bigger stage. Watching it is a reminder that while Connor and Locke have already gone to Hollywood, this is a cosy, snug drama, resistant to almost all bells and whistles. The extent of its showiness is the occasional cartoonish flourish and a fondness for celebrity cameos. With Olivia Colman as Nick’s mother absent this season, Hayley Atwell and Jonathan Bailey have stepped in. Otherwise, this Netflix series would be right at home on the BBC (and I don’t mean that as an insult).

Each episode follows the same loose formula. There is a momentous or seasonal event – GCSE results, a summer holiday, Christmas, a birthday – and the teenagers work out how they feel about an issue, be it Tori recognising her need for companionship now that Charlie is in love, or high-achieving Tara (Corinna Brown) working out how to balance her relationship with her mother’s desire for her to go to a top university.

Early on, it seems as if this season might need to find a little more grit for its oyster. The tension of Charlie and Nick’s will-they-won’t-they has long since dissipated. As with any romantic story in which the leads get together, this makes it trickier to keep the spark alive.

But it soon finds new, if still gentle, maturity. Earlier hints at Charlie’s problems with food are pushed to the front, while Nick finds himself in the difficult position of working out how to help his boyfriend through something far beyond his teenage capacity. Nick is essentially the safe dream boyfriend for teenage viewers – an apparition of calmness, romance and support, packaged in a willingness to wear a vest, or go topless, whenever duty calls. Charlie’s decline unfurls at a steady pace and maintains an appearance of truth. Locke’s scenes with the psychiatrist Geoff (another famous grownup, Eddie Marsan) seem authentic and quietly revelatory.

Similarly Yasmin Finney, as Elle, takes on a more demanding role, this time touching on the realities and details of life as a trans teenage girl and her place in the world. If one of the main themes of this season is sex – and if and when the couples are ready to have sex – then one scene in particular, between Elle and her boyfriend, Tao (William Gao), is handled beautifully and softly, as if cradling fine china. While Tao’s vast enthusiasm for his role as boyfriend is mildly irritating, there are intricacies to their relationship that are explored with real care.

The teenagers of Heartstopper all have their issues, and face self-doubt and uncertainties, but they explain what is happening to them as if they are examining every facet of their behaviour from a great distance. While I don’t doubt that real teenagers are articulate, this comprehension of what is happening offers the solace of a fantasy, without the rough edges of reality. Ultimately, everything here feels just about manageable, even at its worst. This is part of what makes it so comforting to watch.

Smartphone natives will find its frenetic pace more bearable than those of us who grew up with Snake on a Nokia, but, in truth, this is not for us. It is a young-leaning teen series about personal dramas that seem all-encompassing at 16 and 17, but take on a blurrier, even vaguely nostalgic, sheen with the passing of time. For adults – particularly those who grew up with Section 28 on the books, when being LGBTQ+ often came with a veneer of shame – the loveliness of Heartstopper is in imagining that this is what teenage life could have been like. For those who can relate directly to the teenagers on their screen, what a treat.