Skins... All Of It

So am back in Newbury, lounging around on my sabbatical and playing far too much D&D with whichever nerd is hanging around my house at the time (and since I live with three of them, that's quite a lot of the time). I survived the rampages of puppy Bailey, he's now experienced the horrors of being shut in, but then he does have another dog to keep him company, so I'm sure he'll cope.

One of the other things I've been doing while on my Sabbatical is watching Skins. All of it. It's all up on 4OD and I read that the seventh season intends to be the last one, so I shall take a look at the six that have come before it and offer my opinions on them, because there was a time not too long ago when it was all about Skins, there was a lot of press coverage and opinions flying about. So, my two cents.

SKINS
(this could be a long one)

GENERATION ONE:
Tony & Michelle, Sid & Cassie, Jal & Chris, Maxxie & Anwar, the Elusive Effy. The first season of this show kind of caught the British public unawares with it's massive presence, frequent drug use, frequent language, frequent sex, frequent teenage angst and frequent just about everything else. With it's colourful cast of characters and cheerful but otherwise mundane setting in middle England, this series was out to make you look at the nearest teenager and think 'really, you guys do that all the time?'. I know I didn't when I was their age, but then I'm not the poster boy for normality.

There are parties, there's pills, there's hormones, there's booze and desperate attempts to have sex by the frustrated. But beneath all this shiny, glossy, vomit-smeared exterior, there's actually a much deeper story about being too young to understand love but still having it rule your life. There's some truly questioning moments about why a gay lad and a muslim lad shouldn't hang out together and exactly how far can you push a friendship based on mutual self-loathing. If you want, this series can be just about the sex, the parties, the drugs and the jokes. If you want, this series is so much more.

So, the characters. Tony's manipulative, shallow, domineering and, oddly enough, our main hero. His girlfriend Michelle adores him but is constantly frustrated by him, his best friend Sid worships the ground he walks on, the rest of the gang seem to look to him for a lead. The only person he really seems to care about is his sister Effy, who takes everything that Tony does and amplifies it by about ten degrees. Sid is more sympathetic, he's just not good at anything and all he wants is Michelle. Or is it Cassie. Or is it Michelle? No, wait, it's Cassie, if only she'd eat a hot meal or nineteen.

Chris is the party animal who seems to get dumped on by life more than anyone could have thought possible, yet still comes up with a blood-smeared grin. Anwar's our not quite strictly adhered to Muslim boy, who can't quite reconcile the partying and pills with his faith. Maxxie is an unusual character, in that he's still considered 'one of the boys' despite being gay, also a talented dancer. Jal is quite repressed and under the pressure of her succesful father whom she resents heavily. That's our cast, nine miscreants and headfucks.

So series one sees Tony working his magic through the gang, trying to get them all to dance to whatever tune he wants. It starts to come apart when other people have ideas of their own and he makes an enemy or two along the way. Just when he's trying to pull it together, he's hit by a bus. Series two sees his rehabilitation, along with everyone else trying to grow up without him pointing the way, often getting it wrong and sometimes getting it superbly right. Another character, Lucy, was introduced, but I feel that they probably shouldn't have bothered, she didn't do anything to shake the series up.


One of the reasons this was such a good show is also one of its downsides, each episode focuses heavily on a single character, often at the detriment or ignorance of the others, so often things that seem incredibly important in one episode never seem to crop up again, like Michelle's step-sister, Chris's abandoment, Jal's young musician of the year entry and so on. This being said, only Lost has had such a heavy focus on its characters and we know how that went. This, on the other hand, seems to get it spot on, with each of our young cast being able to shine under their own spotlight, then work on helping the others shine in theirs. When the second season came to an end (which was accused of being more serious than the first, what with all the death and mortality), I felt that we'd achieved a good end to a story. But oh wait, Bryan Elsley and Jamie Brittain weren't quite done with us yet, were they.


GENERATION TWO:
Freds, Cook and JJ. Effy and Pandora. Tomas. Naomi. Katie and Emily. Term was back in at Roundview Collage and an almost completely new cast of faces. With only Effy returning from the previous two years, would seasons three and four be able to measure up and find their own way compared to the previous cast? The answer in my opinion was, hells yes. They did it, they managed to keep the underpinning theme and feel of the show the same while reinventing the look and swish of the characters. The trio of best buddies that's torn apart by a girl, the burgeoning homosexual relationship between two girls that can't quite help drag everyone else into it, the problems of an immigrant boy who doesn't really like where he has come to live. It's the same, but it's new.

As with the previous generation, our main character goes through a massive character shift. This time it's Effy, Tony's younger sister from the first generation, and she goes from being queen of the universe to depressed, alcoholic, emotionally shut off and suicidal, all over the situation that she's landed herself in over these three boys. Freds begins to hate his former best friend Cook, who gets to sleep with Effy whenever he wants, while JJ feels torn apart because those two used to be the centre of his world. All the while, there's the usual partying, drugs, sex, alcohol and occasional violence that lands people in all the trouble they seem to deserve, especially Cook.

Cook's probably the most interesting character in this generation, to be honest. JJ is far more loveable, Emily and Katie have their very twincestuous issues, Effy's fucked in the head, Pandora's naive and innocent, Tomas is decent and reliable, Cook is violent, dominant and abusive. He believes fiercly in loyalty and he's always, always getting into trouble. He's kind of like an attention magnet, really. For all the hating that you feel towards him, since he's a screw-up that doesn't apologise for anything, shags everything that's even remotely female nearby and is just generally detestable, you can't help but watch him and wonder why the hell he's like that. I thoroughly dislike the kid, but he's certainly got the presence.

Much like the previous generation, the second season (so fourth overall) of this generation got more serious than the first, what with Effy turning suicidal, Katie and Emily feuding and the death of the girl in the club in the very opening moments of the series, leading to a police investigation that runs through the course of the season. While for the first generation this change of tone was unexpected, for the second generation it brings into focus just how different the characters were from their predecessors and how they want to measure up to their parents. A note on parents, for all the kids in all the generations, their parents are played by a variety of well-known and talented actors, who all seem to have about ten minutes of screen time put together, which was an interesting choice in casting, but probably a good one.

I think I actually prefer this generation to the first, I found the character dynamics and the almost hard-to-watch storytelling to be much more engaging. And it helps that Cook has the end scene of the fourth series, a scene that turns all of your dislike for him on its head. Oh hells yes, that was a good end.

GENERATION THREE:
Franky. Rich & Alo. Mini and her minions, Liv & Grace. Nick & Matty. While the second generation had Effy to tie it to the first generation, this generation didn't have any links to the previous two, which alienates it from the start. I didn't feel that the writing was as strong on this one. The characters, most of them, are still pretty good and they're easily watchable. Franky goes from being isolated and shy to being an outspoken self-destructive rebel, Rich goes from being defensively aggressive to being loving and accepting, Alo goes from being childish and irresponsible to realising that he has to grow up, Mini goes from being icy popular girl into scared mother-to-be. But while the last generation felt fresh and yet similiar, this generation felt like it was clutching at the gaps left behind by the past four years.


It's not that I disliked these two seasons, it's just that I felt they weren't as strong competitors compared to what they've just followed. Matty was a character that I just didn't understand, he was flitty and I didn't understand how anyone found him attractive. His brother Nick seemed like a straight and boring mirror to him, but actually turned into the more interesting character, what with discovering what family's all about. If this generation sounds like I'm not giving it as much attention as the previous two... well, that's about right, to be honest. It was a fainter shadow of stronger personalities. The partying, drugs and sex were all upped for this generation and by the end of it, it felt kind of sickly and bitter, seeing just that much debauchery and finding that I don't really find it alluring. And Grace got creepy.


So yeah, that's Skins. It was controversial, it was decried, it was beloved and it's almost over. There's another series next year, but that'll be the last swansong for all three generations, rather than introducing a fourth. I can't help but wonder if the series would have been better simply sticking with the first generation over these seven years. What with the two year-thing being based on A-Levels that they're all supposedly taking in the background, I wonder if maybe it would have been best to see Tony and Michelle at their seperate universitys over three years, or see how Sid got on in the States, or if Maxxie and Anwar could ever afford food. Maybe, but they went a direction that hadn't been tried in TV before and I applaud them for it. The only thing I dislike was that they had to remix the opening credits tune every year. I liked how it was to start, that was good, why couldn't they have kept that? Oh well, not the end of the world.

It's all on 4OD. Go watch if you want.

Next review: AVENGERS.... ASSEMBLE!!