18February
This year's Show That Would Like To Be is going out on E4. Launched with a tremendous hype (albeit one that we managed to completely avoid), Skins
(All3Media) is a series of self-contained 45-minute comedy-dramas, centred around an ensemble cast of teens at a sixth-form college. It appears that each member will take the lead in one of the series' episodes. It's nominally set in Bristol; the location is completely anonymous and does not matter to the plot, though does explain why at least one person each week sounds like Justin Lee Collins.
The adult characters generally appear in cameo roles, and are mostly played by established comedians - Harry Enfield appeared in the opening episode as an irascible father, Neil Morrissey's turned up as a sex-obsessed one, and Victoria Wicks (Sally Smedley from Drop the Dead Donkey
) cropped up as the college head-teacher who had guzzled heavily from the fountain of Blairite bollocks. The teenagers, the real stars of the show, are mostly unknowns, though Nicholas Hoult is (apparently) an established star. Albeit one that we've never heard of.
The grown-ups are as cartoonish and two-dimensional as those from turn-of-the-century cartoon Daria
. Wicks's head-teacher is an almost direct re-creation of Lawndale's Ms. Li, while the romance between two other teachers has strong overtones of Ms. Barch and Mr. O'Neill. Mercifully, the younger characters are fully-formed, otherwise this would be Hollyoaks
with swearing.
Make no mistake, the first episode is a clunker. For all the light humour - Tony (Hoult) handling a million phone calls at once, the inevitable trashing of an expensive carpet - there is no substance to the plot. The episode ends in a textbook example of plot cliché: borrowed car, handbrake, canal. Even Last of the Summer Wine
would have thought at least once about this before including it.
Vic's Law of Pilots holds: the rest of the series is better. Hannah Murray puts a whole lot of heart into the second episode, and restores some much-needed credibility. Hoult is utterly unconvincing as the primus inter pares (or Danny Bash-street, if you prefer) of the lead cast; Murray is scarily on-target with her role, playing the part of anorexic tragic drama heroine Cassie with dexterity and aplomb. She's helped by expressive eyes that often render words not strictly necessary. Larissa Wilson has less to work with in Jal's episode, but still turns in a credible performance as the unspoiled daughter of a very rich man. Episode four - led by Joe Dempsie as Chris - was weird and heavy and we're probably going to have to see it in re-runs to make sense.
Running through the first few episodes is a particularly strong plot involving Sid (Mike Dempsey), the titular skins, and a dealer with a moustache that's wider than his face. Dempsey plays a stereotypical geek, aching to fit in.
There are two reasons why Skins
knocks spots off the imported schlock that is E4's stock-in-trade. One, it's relevant to its audience. For British viewers, Theoc
may as well be set in the same fantasy universe as Smallville
, they are both so far divorced from real life. And two, it uses the 45-minute slot to its maximum. So many of the imports are half-hour dramas shamelessly stretched out to fill the time available. Skins
is never rushed, yet never wastes time with anything that doesn't advance a plot.
There are elements of seminal drama Cold Feet
in the mix, and some of the leaps of dramatic logic are as odd as that show's recent successor, Tripping Over
. Perhaps the closest overall analogy is with early E4 programme As If
. Both shows had an ensemble cast, both were able to address social concerns within the confines of a drama, both managed this without forcing characters into unnatural contortions. We remember less levity in As If
, but that could be an error in our memory; E4 is surprisingly reluctant to show its first drama commission again.
Is Skins
going to be bracketed with My So-Called Life
? After four episodes, it's too early to say for certain; that we've not ruled out the possibility is promising. There's no particular reflection of cross-generational plots - indeed, we've seen one, perhaps two, sympathetic characters older than 20. The producers' insistence that there shall be no voice-offs actively interferes with the dramatic process on occasion.
But there are compensations. Sid and Jal recreate the Brian and Rayanne scene in Weekend
, and when Chris receives a huge cash gift from an absent parent, his first thought - like Rayanne's - is to party, and that turns out to be a disaster. The moment in the second episode where Cassie is thanking Sid for something he didn't do is a moment to rank alongside Angela's realisation that Jordan is not coming; indeed, Sid seems to be a close approximation to the Brian Krakow character. We're not entirely sure why everyone is shown as running everywhere, perhaps this is Blairite fountain-water to make the young people of to-day a little fitter.
Most importantly, the tenor of the shows is similar. There's a moderately sympathetic portrayal of every character's imperfections, and the writers absolutely refuse to dictate a moral line on anything. They don't say, This is how you should live, but This is how the character lives, here are the consequences, good and bad. Redemption by the end of the episode is not guaranteed. A happy ending is not guaranteed. Indeed, an ending is not guaranteed.
Ultimately, anything that can have us shouting at the television, so caught up in the drama, has to be worth the candle.
While researching this article, we were not surprised to learn that only one character has their own Livejournal community. Can you guess which one has caught the attention of the emoset? Nor were we surprised to learn that there's still very little teleliterary criticism of the show; it's only a few episodes old, and jumping in this early sets up for a fall.
