Skins

Get a fucking job, the lot of you.

My housemates watched the first series on E4. Now they're watching it again on Channel 4. Even as someone who found the hyper-comedy-drama reality of Shameless and Teachers (two very obvious precursors) quite enjoyable, Teachers especially, I loathe Skins.

For a start (and this is foreplay, trust me), I can't work out if it takes itself entirely seriously or not. Sometimes, I think its purely ironic, as if the whole thing is an extended fantasy sequence of what a certain type of person thinks being a modern teenager is like.

At other times, I think the People What Are Responsible expect me to seriously believe (and invest) in a character who screams, "I want to, like, rip her fucking tits off!"

Most of the time, I think it could even be a successful production exercise in being both, catering to both the people who think its all-out ludicrous, tongue-in-cheek silliness and the people who just, well, don't.

"Hey, its ironic if you want it to be! If not - This Is What Your Life Is Actually Like."

And maybe my life was just really, really boring compared to the oh-so-gut-wrenchingly-trendy writers of this show. I mean, I never had three days of digestive problems brought on by swallowing a load of recreational drugs in time for a school trip abroad. I never took viagra and pissed myself in the face the morning after. My mother never left me to my own devises long enough for the house to turn into a squat (FYI: three days). And so on and so forth.

It all seems like complete and utter farce to me. Even at a push, even if I suspend my disbelief for long enough to accept some of the situations the characters get into, I can't help but feel its all completely played for laughs and, if it isn't, the quality of some of the acting very quickly drags it down into the Quagmire of Unintentional Humour.

Perhaps this is because I am Extremely Dull And Boring and perhaps this website will erupt with thousands upon thousands of people telling me exactly how Dull and Boring I am with the use of maths, Newtonian law, anecdotes of just how munted they got one time and large visual aids.

The point here is not necessarily the content in and of itself. Massive teenage parties, binge drinking, drug use, sex - all this happens in real life... but look at the way its shot, look at the edits on certain punchlines... look how everything (everything) is pushed to an absurd extreme. I mean, take for example the psychology teacher and Chris gettin' it aaaawn in Russia. They're standing, facing one another for a moment and then the irresistable urge for sex overcomes them and they tear at one another's clothes and plunge onto the bed and RRRAAAAARRRGH*.

Its just so subtle. I'm sure many people missed what was going on, entirely.

Or they did until someone hears the sex noise (of course!) and, investigating the noises, walks in on them thrusting away at one another (double of course!). Its Carry on Teenagin'.

I should hold my horses, obviously.

Because comedy-drama has a right to be both comedic and dramatic. Just because I, from my vaulted, sneering high-horse, can't feel empathy for the characters of Skins does not mean no one else is able.

Look at how sensitively the extremely original anorexic depressive was treated, for example: being sent to a country estate where a group of Victorian exhibit lunatics prance about singing, waving colourful flags and one disturbed chap is no longer allowed to keep rabbits because he kept firing them into the air strapped to rockets. How astonishingly brave of this programme to tackle such an issue... no, can't do it. Everything about Cassie is played for cheap laughs and the visit to the estate caters precisely to the sort of person who uses the word "retard" about people with epilepsy.

All right then, I'll try again. I'm sure some people watch Skins for that one unarguable reason anyone watches complete and utter tosh: escapism. For that right to frolic in someone's lurid fantasy of being a teenager, in the same way that Doctor Who fans frolic in someone's lurid fantasy of being a time and space travelling intergalactic trouble shooter or fans of Die Hard frolic in someone's lurid fantasy of being Motherfuckin' Bruce Willis. With a gun.

The Escapism Clause lets you off.








Even so...


Wouldn't anyone rather be boring if having a life so packed steaming full of youthful hijinks such as international drug smuggling and the constant, gruelling quest for sex means you have to be, for instance, this chap:

MASSIVE TWAT**

Or this girl:

TWAT

Who, despite her range of designer gear, professional mother and crisp, upper class accent (that makes everytime she says, "Oh, faark orrf," utterly hilarious) is referred to as a chav.

Or perhaps, erm, her:

ALSO AN ANNOYING TWAT

Or any of the other two dimensional nitwits who populate this TV show (don't even get me started on what the blurb calls the "tap-dancing gay enigma" of the group). None of them are remotely likeable except for Sid. To be honest, if the entire thing was just a sitcom following Sid's misadventures in a posse of twats (and, at times, that is exactly what it seems to be) I'd enjoy it a lot more.

Then again, I wanted Heroes to be just about Hiro, somewhat negating the ensemble nature of the show and probably cutting it to a quarter of the length, but at least the whole thing wouldn't be so utterly po-faced.

I can hardly bear to watch Skins. Not only are the individual characters annoying but the script they are plunged through is a giddy whirl of juvenile banality, devoid of any substance and completely, achingly shallow. The contrived, inconsistently paced plot, what there is of it, seems at times just an excuse for showing young girls in their bras at any remotely plausible opportunity.

It all just reminds of a low-budget (and fairly abysmal) series that aired early on Channel Five at weekends called Harry and Cosh. If Channel Five had made a post-watershed version... it would have been Skins.

And, laden on this, this whole air of superiority that says, "Byker fucking Grove never did this, did it? This is REAL. Anyone who doesn't like it is simply in denial about what their children do at the weekends."

Oh, grow up.





*Their lust is satiated in a moment of sudden, animal passion

**Basically, a synonym for any committed hedonism.


--------
Jachap is forty-five. And reads the Daily Mail.