A teenage sex therapist on a high school campus is the premise of the hit Netflix series Sex Education. Starring Asa Butterfield and Gillian Anderson, its first season attracted 40m viewers in the first weeks of streaming and it’s back for a second series. Writer and creator Laurie Nunn discusses balancing serious sexual content with humour, why it’s hard to pin down the location and era of the series, and the debt it owes to the American high school movies of the '80s and '90s.

All this week Front Row is talking to the winners of the different categories of the Costa Book Awards. Tonight Samira hears from the poetry winner, Mary Jean Chan. Chan was a competitive fencer, representing Hong Kong, and her first collection takes its title, Flèche, from an offensive technique in the sport, but it also suggests the vulnerability of the body.

At the end of last year came news that podcasts will now be eligible for the Pulitzer Prize for Audio Reporting. What does this mean about the status and quality of podcasts and what are the trends in their consumption, whether streamed or downloaded via Apple, Spotify, BBC Sounds and others? Podcaster and critic Caroline Crampton joins us to discuss this along with Kate Hutchison, co-fouder of Lasso Audio, a new podcast talent agency based in New York.

Presenter Samira Ahmed Producer Jerome Weatherald

Laurie Nunn on Sex Education, Mary Jean Chan, Podcast news