Ncuti Gatwa

Eric Effiong dresses like a firework, and the clothes are the least of it. In Sex Education (2019) Gatwa plays a boy who has looked at the alternative to being joyful and found it unthinkable, and what he acts is the choosing, morning after morning, rather than the result. Ben Taylor and Kate Herron worked out early that when an episode flagged they could cut to him and it would lift, and for four series it does. It moved us more than a school comedy has any right to, because Gatwa never lets the cheer look free; we could see him deciding on it, and see what stopping would cost. We scored the programme 78 and thought the least interesting person in it was the one it was about. Eric was why we kept watching.

He came to the camera from the stage. After the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland he worked at Dundee Rep from 2013, played Mercutio in 2014 and Demetrius for Emma Rice at Shakespeare's Globe in 2016, and the training shows: he moves like a dancer and lands a comic line with his whole body rather than his face. Screen work before Eric was small, a part in Bob Servant (2014) and Stonemouth (2015). Then Eric, and then everything at once: Artist Ken in Barbie (2023), the Fifteenth Doctor in Doctor Who (2023–2025) for Russell T Davies, and a return to the stage for The Importance of Being Earnest at the National Theatre in 2024. We have not reviewed his Doctor and will not pretend to. What is on the record is that he left after two series and nineteen episodes, which is short for the modern run, and that the consensus is the charm crossed over intact.

The worry with a performer this open is that openness becomes the whole act. Eric works because Laurie Nunn gives the cheer something to push against. Gatwa has said that "Eric was so dedicated to his authenticity, living his truth. That has permeated into my life", which is a generous thing to say about a part and a slightly alarming one for an actor to say about himself. Barbie gave him a supporting part as Artist Ken, and a supporting Ken is not a test of anything. Two such parts in a row and the firework would be the only thing anyone asked him for.

What he needs now is a director who withholds the smile. Rice made him a Demetrius; someone should hand him a man in a bad temper for two hours with no coat to hide in, and see what is left when joy is not an option. Until then, start with Sex Education, which is the best case for him and the only one we can vouch for.