Skincest.

The new series of skins has started. Hooray. However, I decided to give it two weeks before throwing my opinion of it over the web, as, in true skins style, the opening episode is not really an episode, but more of an extended trailer, introducing the characters and brief snippets of their personalities that tantalisingly hint at the shenanigans we should be in for in the coming weeks.
We start episode 2 with the focus on Cook, the fun loving loudmouth who, at first glance, appears to be a chav version of Chris from the first two seasons. There’s a fairly obvious play on words you can form from his name: one that, no doubt, is in use on many Internet forums as we speak. Suffice to say, over the course of the episode Cook proves this nickname to be entirely accurate.
I posted last week that Skins series 3 would take one of two directions, and, unfortunately, it appears that Skins has decided not to bother itself with silly things like narrative and character, instead concentrating on fitting as many scenes that would look cool on youtube into one episode as possible, in the vain hope that viewers will send said clips to each other taking multi platform viewing to it’s inevitable moronic conclusion. Take Cook: When we first meet him he is, undeniably, a bellend. This is no bad thing, some of the finest characters in TV history are bellends; indeed, it would take a fool to argue that Tony series 1 was anything but. However, rather than reveal layers to the character, or to ground him through, if not situations, but at least actions that are believable, he simply acts like an even bigger bellend than you initially thought. The characterisation across the board is uniformly weak and the whole thing plays out like the Bash Street Kids have found their fathers secret stash- although nowhere near as entertaining as that sounds.
The dip in quality from, not just the first series, but the (poor) second series is noticeable. I can’t blame the actors who, for such a young group, do a fine job with what they are given. And the direction, as always with skins, is excellent, if a little too frenetically paced for my tastes. The problem lies with the script, which was truly dreadful. Not only did the dialogue lack all of the wit and candour of previous Skins episodes, but the episode must also rank as the least believable hour of fiction I’ve seen on T.V. And I’m including Seasame Street, Back to the Future and that episode of the news where O.J. got acquitted in that list. Nothing believable happened. Not once. For starters Cook was still alive at the end of the episode. He would have at least, received a harder beating from the supposed gangsters led by McKenzie Crook (I kid you not) Despite only being 17, Cook was not only able to take enough cocaine and drink enough alcohol to Kill Pete Doherty several times over, but then walk around sober as a judge, visit a brothel, punch a gangster, and maintain an erection! I know you’re at your sexual peek at that age, but the sight of McKenzie Crook spread eagle on a sexual torture rack would be enough to tip anyone over the edge. It was as if the writers simply wanked all their pre-pubescent fantasies of what being a teenager would be over the page, then handed it in to be filmed. Skins seems to be eschewing the larger audience it gained through knowing scripts and clever dialogue, and concentrating on the audience of 13-15 year olds who will live vicariously through its characters. I’m honest enough to admit that, when I was 14, skins would have appealed to me enormously; the idea of kids, only slightly older than me, living seemingly adult lives, but with no responsibilities, worries or recriminations, and only a lifetime orgy of sex and excess to contend themselves with, would have been enormously attractive. And I imagine it would be for today’s teenagers, if it wasn’t so insulting to their intelligence. Skins seems to be playing to a mythical audience of idiots, who only get excited when they see either a.) drugs b.) drink or c.) sex on the screen. The old skins would have been aware of this and played on these preconceptions. Unfortunately, any sense of self-reference and irreverence has been lost in order so Skins can appear to stay edgy and cool. Skins has been many things before but it’s never been stupid. Until now.

Shedding Skins.

The new series of Skins starts tonight and I await in a state of what can only be described as: apathy. It's not that I dislike Skins- quite the reverse in fact; I thought the first series of Skins was a brilliantly subversive drama and the finest piece of television aimed at Teenagers this century. It's just the second series was, well, awful. It really, really was. Where the first series took every cliche of "yoof" T.V and turned them on their heads, the second series reinforced every doubt and fear you had of what an E4 teenage drama would be, it was like As If all over again. The second series of Skins was, simply, dreadful. Where the first series managed to skillfully craft rounded, three-dimensional characters that took teen stereotypes and turned them on their head (quite literally in Tony's case), the second series took those characters and stripped them down into vapid, boring assortments of quirks and one-liners. The Series started to believe it's own hype and concentrated more on appearing edgy and cool and creating 'water cooler moments' for the playground (I'm not sure what the playground equivalent of a water cooler is these days, but, using Skins as my example, I assume it's some effortlessly cool Serbian drug dealer, whom the kids all gather around at break time to buy their mid-day Heroin kicks that they can all inexplicably afford in between their twice weekly flights to New York, all done without their parents even noticing.) I know the first Series had this problem to, but even at its most ridiculous and far fetched (Russia anyone?) the series was wonderfully grounded by the believable and human characters that elicited emotion and humour from the stories. By the second series they were less believable than the plot-lines, and had all become so horrible that the only like-able character left was Chris, who achieved this simply through the virtue of being dead. The promos for the new series don't fill me with hope, with the pikey looking cast seemingly even younger than the first lot, and a truly terrible promo- where said pikeys blow up a pub, Suggesting that Skins 3.0 is going to be reaching for the ever more niche teen audience rather than allowing itself to be an enjoyably guilty pleasure for people over the age of 16 like it used to be. Still, I'll be watching, even if it's just to marvel peculiar fashion sense of trendy London types that permeate society, and wondering just how long I'd last in a school where everyone looks like Nick Grimshaw.