Skins, the latest British import to make its way to North America, is being advertised as the teen drama for people who find Gossip Girl too genteel. The show was created for Channel 4 in the UK, then recently brought over to BBC America. The first nine-episode season (or "series" as they're called in England) was released on region one DVD on January 13 amidst new outcries that television has reached new lows. And if you watch the first episode, "Tony", full of teens drinking, doing drugs, and having sex, you'll be ready to believe the hype.
The first episode of the series introduces us to Tony, an incredibly handsome, intelligent, popular 16-year-old with a mind squarely focused on debauchery, played by Nicholas Hoult. (Yes, the dorky kid from About a Boy has become incredibly handsome. Didn't see that coming.) Tony has decided that his best friend Sid (Mike Bailey) needs to lose his virginity, so he decides to use his charms to get his girlfriend Michelle (April Pearson) to take care of that for him. So, yes, the introduction to the series is centred around a plot where an entitled little douchebag manipulates his girlfriend into getting one of her friends to shag his dorky friend. Not exactly promising stuff if you're looking for real drama instead of titillating teenage thrills.
But while the series starts off like another in a series of teensploitation works that strike fear in the hearts of parents everywhere, like Kids, Thirteen, or Havoc, albeit one with more engaging characters and a better sense of fun, it quickly changes tracks to reveal greater depth than one would expect. The second episode, "Cassie", focuses on Cassie, a spacey anorexic played by Hannah Murray, just released from therapy in the first episode (when she was recruited to deflower Sid). While her problems were played more for laughs in "Tony", Cassie is revealed here to be a tragic character, who draws instant sympathy from the audience once we get a glimpse of her life. Hannah Murray proves to be a terrific young actress, instantly engaging while remaining quirky. After this spotlight episode, which features a brilliant (and horrifying) scene where Cassie describes her techniques used to deceive people into thinking that she eats, I was sold on the series, with Cassie joining Sid as my favourite characters of the series.
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