It's almost time to go back to Moordale for more Sex Education as Netflix has announced the new season starts September 17th. The new season was originally announced by the show's Headmaster Groff - played by Alistair Petrie - in a post on YouTube back in February last year. This was followed by Asa Butterfield, who plays socially inept Otis, saying he had read the first episode of season 3 in July, and then it has just been a long, long wait, but now it's finally almost over.

Netflix posted the date announcement on their Twitter account, along with some images from the upcoming episodes, which see the regulars back in what looks like a different uniform and signaling a number of changes to be expected when we head back to class. This links in with comments made by Butterfield on reading the scripts, which he said "took the series in a direction he didn't expect." While we like more of the same, a different direction sounds just as good.

With seasons one and two coming just a year apart, the postponed filming of season three due to the state of the world has made the wait seem like an eternity. However, now that we know that season three is almost here, we can look forward to seeing pretty much the whole cast again, with Butterfield's Otis being joined by his mother, Jean, played by Gillian Anderson, best friend, Eric (Ncuti Gatwa), would be love of his life, Maeve (Emma Mackey), nice but dim, Aimee (Amiee Lou Wood), Adam (Connor Swindells), Jackson (Kedar Williams-Stirling), Ola (Patricia Allison), Lily (Tanya Reynolds), and, of course, Headmaster Groff (Alistair Petrie).

As well as a whole host of regulars, season three has added Harry Potter star Jason Isaacs to the cast as Headmaster Groff's older and more successful brother, Peter Groff, whom the younger Groff brother has been living with since the breakdown of his marriage in season two. Following Groff's departure from Moordale, Girls star Jemima Kirke takes on the role of new headmistress of the school, Hope. Having been a student of the school herself in the past, the new head has big ideas to put Moordale back on the right track, which I'm sure will lead to the type of trouble we have come to expect. Last but not least, we have the arrival of Cal, a non-binary classmate who doesn't quite hit it off with the new headmistress, played by Dua Saleh.

Laurie Nunn did a fantastic job in seasons one and two of keeping many plates spinning at once, creating a story that pulled you in and held you right to the end. Nunn has mentioned wanting to continue on after season three, and if the new season is as well received as its predecessors, Sex Education may manage to avoid the axe that has been falling on many other series.

"We hope that it goes beyond three... and four and five," she said in an interview with THR. "As long as people want it, as long as the stories are there to tell. I think these characters, they've got legs. I think I could do some more with them if we're given the chance."

There is plenty of time to catch up on the first two seasons before season three arrives, both of which are now streaming on Netflix.