It may feel like a US high-school drama, but Netflix’s Sex Education was actually shot in our own Wye valley. We asked how locals feel about their newfound fame

Underneath the sign for Brown’s Village Stores, established in 1928, a bright poster urges the drivers of Llandogo to “Slow down!”. It is a well-intentioned message, but from this month onwards things in the Monmouthshire village are much more likely to speed up. In fact, a steady stream of visitors is already pouring in to see the shop and the other key locations used in Sex Education, a quirky comedy which in recent weeks has become one of Netflix’s most successful original television series.

“We are being asked about the show continually now. It is amazing. And I haven’t even seen it yet as I don’t have Netflix,” said Roger Brown, who, with his wife Ruth, has been running the village store since 1958. “People stop when they see our name, which they kept for the show. So it is doing very well for us, which is lovely.”

Since its release online earlier this month, more than 40 million people worldwide have watched Sex Education, which stars Gillian Anderson as Jean, a liberated, single, sex-therapist mother, and Asa Butterfield as Otis, her embarrassed and socially awkward son. And while it might not be a surprise that a show called Sex Education has been a streaming hit with young and old alike, what is a surprise to many viewers is the fact that the series, which has a distinctly Americanised feel to it, was filmed in a small Welsh village near the border with Gloucestershire.

“So many people have said to me: where is that?” said Kate Murrell, the show’s director of production. “Certainly, there is a bit of a 1980s look and a bit of the US high school drama look. It was a bit risky but it seems to work.”

Many fans are already visiting the locations. Caroline Hopkinson, the owner of Bigsweir House, the grand venue for a teenage party early in the series, soon spotted an increase in strangers taking photographs of her home from the banks of the River Wye. “It has been a great experience,” she said. “We thoroughly enjoyed having the crew here, although I guess more exposure for this area could have some disadvantages.”

The American appearance of the show, which revolves around a “high school” filmed in a disused university building at nearby Caerleon, was a deliberate aim for both Sex Education’s writer, Laurie Nunn, and the show’s makers, Eleven Films. As Anderson recently told Radio Times: “There is a bit of both worlds, decidedly, in the series, and the aim and the hope is that Americans won’t notice.”

While it makes the show accessible for a worldwide audience often already familiar with the long tradition of American high school dramas – from James Dean classics to John Hughes movies and comedy series such as Malcolm in the Middle – it also helps to create a crucially surreal atmosphere. “When I saw the area I felt it was a highly nuts place, like a fairy land,” said Murrell. “And once we found our empty school, we knew we were right. It seems both everywhere and nowhere in the show. I was unfamiliar with the Wye valley but, as many people already know, it is really magical. There are crazy houses all around with different architecture. The one we used above Symonds Yat is a real one-off.”

The team at Eleven Films were careful to make friends in the Wye valley, in the hope of returning. They took every care with Hopkinson’s home and with putting Brown’s Village Stores back in correct order after what Roger and Ruth remember as “a huge upheaval” during filming. And they also worked with young people in the area, setting up a work experience scheme and a traineeship. “We really wanted to integrate and not just to pilot in and out,” said Murrell. “We wanted people to feel part of it and, since our industry is pretty buoyant now, we also genuinely need to make sure the next generation of skilled crew are coming through.”

It has definitely worked for Hopkinson’s son Rory, 23, who started out as an extra but has now become a returning “featured” character in the show – a student called Joel. Rory is now considering a career in entertainment.

The show, which was also filmed in Penarth, is allowing locals and potential tourists to see the area with new eyes. The young people of Wales are glamorised – and so is the landscape around them. “This really is the most beautiful valley and in every season it has its charm,” said Brown. “I have lived in Llandogo all my life and it is great to see it from above now at the beginning of the show, something they filmed with a big drone.”