if you're wondering why i am suddenly posting i was actually just watching grey's anatomy but patrick dempsey had a really ugly haircut from one ep to another that i had to take a break

Skins, the Ultimate Teen Drama: why Generation 1 is the best

Now if you recognise my avatar you have probably realised that I am a big fan of Skins, the quintessential UK teen drama. But what makes it so special, and why is it so relatable? But most importantly why is Gen 1 (aka the first two series of Skins) infinitely the most superior?

Skins first premiered in January 2007, I must confess I did not watch it until 2013 when I was 16 myself, but I do remember the controversy it caused in its initial run. Parents and papers alike were shocked at the explicit depiction of teenage life: drugs, sex, abortion, expletive language, but one of the main writers, Bryan Elsley, insisted that “Skins [was] a very simple and in fact rather old fashioned television series... about the lives and loves of teenagers, how they [got] through high school, how they deal with their friends, and also how they circumnavigate[d] some of the complications of sex, relationships, educations, parents, drugs and alcohol.” To be honest I could not really relate to the hedonistic social lives of the Skins teens too much, my teenage years were far more mundane and involved more sitting alone watching TV in my bedroom rather than underage partying. But at the heart of the show we saw real, volatile young life, the vulnerabilities, the friendships, the heartbreak, and the silly jokes. These kids were not presented as either particularly cool or uncool (more like Inbetweeners if you will), they liked to hang out with each other in the park, chatting, smoking, bitching, and laughing. There was no real macho, ‘lad-ish’ behaviour, Chris, Maxxie, Anwar and Sid were sweethearts at heart, and whilst you could not describe Tony in that way (being a full on sociopath in Series 1), he was not exactly a lad either, more of a calculating academic. None of the girls were portrayed as Primadonnas or uber-bitchy either, Cassie was your manic pixie dream girl, Jal was the fair, rational one, and Michelle was your slightly spoilt, but very caring girly girl. I apologise for holding the characters to such stereotyped gender ideologies, but teen dramas typically have a tendency for doing this.

In each episode we saw life from the perspective of a different character, a very smart tactic by creators Bryan Elsley and Jamie Brittain, as we got to watch very well-rounded and developed people, not just one dimensional stereotypes. For example hard-partier and fan-favourite Chris was shown to have a very broken home life, his dad had left him when he was young and thought he was a waste of space, his mother was mentally unstable and used to disappear when things got too difficult, and his older brother, who was his idol and secondary father figure, died too young. It is shown that despite his carefree attitude and being a shoulder to cry on for others, Chris ultimately had nothing and no-one apart from his friends. Now the Skins characters home lives were just as dramatic as there social ones, Sid’s dad died, Michelle had a multitude of step-fathers, Cassie’s parents were completely self-involved and were these weird ‘natural Earthy types’, Jal’s father was a famous musician who did not take too much interest in his daughter’s life. Maxxie and Anwar’s parents were a bit more relatable, the former’s father loved his son but wanted him to embark on a more stable career path rather than pursue his own dreams, and the latter had well-intentioned but somewhat Conservative Muslim parents. If the home lives of everyone in your friendship group was as manic as this then I would be surprised, but I do not think that was the whole point of the show. Skins was very extreme in all elements, but was intentionally trippy and surreal, their college musical was named ‘Osama: The Musical’ for God’s sake, I think it was self-aware in its exaggerated portrayal of teenage life. It is still an entertainment show at the end of the day, and everyone will be able to relate to a part of someone’s life in the show, they covered all bases after all. The theatrics on top were entertaining, but underneath it all there was real heart and real juvenile teen behaviour (such as Maxxie and Anwar wearing devil and angel headbands when Sid was contemplating whether to skip class), and that is what made Skins Gen 1 so special and so great.

Generation 2 (Series 3 and 4) of Skins is still very lauded by fans, with Cook (Jack O’Connell) largely viewed as an iconic Skins character, but for me this Generation falls short. Gen 2 applies a darker, colder tone, perhaps influenced by Effy’s ‘ice-queen’ mystique. I am not claiming there were no heartwarming moments (I loved the depiction of Emily and Naomi’s relationship), but overall these characters did not seem to posses the same fundamental care for each other as they did in Gen 1, and that is what made the first Gen so great, they really did all love each other. We saw just how toxic friendships and relationships could get in the second Generation, the nastiness between Freddie and Cook, with JJ receiving the brunt of the fallout, the hatefulness between twins Katie and Emily, although Katie was definitely more to blame for this one, and even Effy and Pandora were shown to have a very fragmented relationship throughout. The characters without any major problems between them never seemed that close either, for example there always seemed to be an iciness between Effy and Naomi, not that they were explicitly mean to one another, but they never seemed to share the same warmth as, say, Cassie and Jal. In Gen 1 the only friendship that was majorly put to a test was Sid and Tony’s, the rest had normal fickle teenage bust-ups, like Jal and Michelle, but there was no real darkness underneath it all. I suppose you could argue that Maxxie and Anwar’s friendship was severely put to the test, but I think that was more of a commentary on his confusing relationship with religion, as even when they were not speaking, the two still clearly loved each other. I also did not get the hype around Cook and Effie either, maybe by todays standards the whole ‘not like other girls’ and ‘#damaged bad boy who does the bare minimum’ schtick are tired tropes, but they did not treat their friends and people around them very well a lot of the time, and just because they were battling their own demons, does not mean their behaviour could be excused.  

In fairness, the darkness of Gen 2 was perhaps what writers Bryan Elsley and Jamie Brittain were aiming for, to mix things up a bit from from the previous Series, and expose a new perspective of teenage life. Maybe it is just the cheesy romantic in me, but the wholesome friendships, bad fashion, and teenage naivety as what drew me to Gen 1 so much. Generation 2 was still very effective as an entertainment show, but for me, the first Generation portrayed what it was really like being a teenager.