Doctor Who: New Doctor Ncuti Gatwa’s previous roles from sex education for Barbie

Sex education (2019-)

Sex education is basically a Spider-Man movie if Peter Parker was bitten by a radioactive sex therapist. It’s a high school comedy-drama about a disabled young man who joins a classmate to give advice on everything sexual to their peers. Gillian Anderson is in and there are currently three seasons on Netflix with a fourth on the way.

The first thing, as one Doctor Who fan that you notice while watching Sex education, is that Ncuti Gatwa is wearing absolutely perfect Doctor pants – gray tweed that Hartnell, Troughton or Capaldi would not turn their nose up at. Later, you will also notice that he is wearing a series of shirts and jackets that Colin Baker would not turn his nose up at either. But Sex education‘s costume designer has not been cast as the doctor Ncuti Gatwa has. Here he plays Eric, the gay, British-Nigerian-Ghanaian (Gatwa is Scottish-Rwandan) best friend of Asa Butterfield’s main character Otis.

We’re skipping that Sex education is clearly put in the same continuum as ‘The Wedding of River Song’, where past, future, present, USA and UK have been mysteriously smeared together into something that almost, but not quite resembles any of them.

Honestly, Gatwa is brilliant in Sex education. All the good marks of a good doctor are there. He can gurne, he can strike with his arms, and he can play the French horn. He can be funny, inspiring and at times heartbreaking. He also manages to carry out the extremely medical-like balancing act, that is, to move into any situation with absolute confidence and no idea what he is doing.

Honestly, if you are one Doctor Who fan, then there’s a good chance you may not have checked out Sex educationbut if you want to see the next doctor in action, you’ll be fine here (with the important caveat that Doctor Who is a children’s show and this it really is not).

Barbie (2023)

The latest post on Ncuti Gatwa’s IMDb page is Greta Gerwig-directed new Barbie film, co-written with Noah Baumbach, and starring Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling and Emma Mackey. This film promises to have more artistic talent behind it than any film ever based on a toy franchise (including Orson Welles’ tour of The Transformers: The Movie).