First Review: Skins
Often television shows don’t hit their stride until after the first season. They iron out the wrinkles, learn who the audience likes and return to the writer’s table full of confidence.
So I’m really looking forward to seeing what Brian Elsley comes up with for the second season of Skins.
This troupe of Bristol teens burst onto our screens in January, telling dynamic stories of teenage angst, ambition, romance, peer pressure, self esteem, anorexia and sexual identity. Wearing their hearts on their sleeves, they blew the rich kids of The OC and Gossip Girl out of the water.
Premiering just weeks after its UK conclusion, this is the equivalent of SBS ‘fast-tracking’.
If you didn’t follow the first series (you don’t know what you’re missing) the title refers to the way the series focuses on a different member every episode to get ‘under their skins’.
When we last left them, alpha male Tony (Nicholas Hoult) had been hit by a bus. He’s back for the second series – but you’ll have to see the first ep to learn any more. Gay dancer Maxxie, played gloriously by Mitch Hewer, is this week’s focus. With his platinum crop and toned physique, Hewer’s clearly been working out during the season break.
But Maxxie is much more than eye candy. He’s a loyal friend to Tony, for whom he harbours a crush, and probably the most well-adjusted kid in the gang. Hewer is also a killer dancer. He leaps through the opening scene’s dance rehearsal with ease – look out Rhys Bobridge!
Maxxie’s dad wants him to become a builder, a story device that’s a bit Billy Eliot for my liking. Watch for the less plot-driven scenes where he laughs off the taunts of homophobes – you won’t believe where that ends up.
The other shining kid I’m waiting to revisit is Sid (Mike Bailey) who, from behind his beanie and spectacles, brims with vulnerability, and is usually handed the production’s best dramatic scenes. But it’s all the cast combined who are the reason to love Skins. Many of them first-time actors, they’re a joy to behold – which is why it will be so much harder when Elsley turfs all but one for the third series. Even in TV you’re too old at 18?
Skins returns 10pm Monday on SBS.
David Knox is an occasional blogger for SBS.
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It’s a fantastic series and maybe the best of the year, in my opinion. The second season gets a bit wobbly occasionally and the quality level between eps. can be quite uneven but when Skins hits its stride, its truly great TV.
Breaks your heart at the end of the series when you know it’s all over, though (mainly because a few important young actors had had enough). Creating and casting a set of new characters as good as these, I predict, will be almost impossible.
Skins is mostly written by a large team of young, inexperienced writers and both the good and bad aspects of this are often all too apparent. Between the strokes of fresh genius there can be a certain lack of continuity, the tendency to tell stories too fast and also to burn the characters too much. Still great, though!
I have to say that i agree with everything written above. i love skins, i do. the first series was bursting with energy, ideas and i fell in love with the characters so easily. the second series is nowhere near as strong… and whilst ivery very nearly wept with actual tears to see this cast go… i do think the new cast move good pay some great dividends
I disagree with you guys. Sure, Skins was good during its peak, but in season 2, it experienced a MASSIVE slump in quality. Some of the characters change (not develop, but CHANGE) drastically this season, particularly Sid and Cassie, both of whom have been SO poorly written this season to the point that I no longer gave a crap about their relationship by the end of the series.
Cassie turned from a bubbly, troubled social misfit to a jealous, obnoxious slut over just one episode, and it became impossible to like her since as she was no longer the character we all fell in love with (thanks to flat-out BAD writing and poor character development).
With that said, there’s still plenty to enjoy if you can look past this season’s glaring faults.