Television Review – Skins

Oh, my, my, my.

So BBC America has begun showing this new program, Skins. Well, it’s new to us, anyhow. The third series will be starting up soon in the UK. It’s a series about a group of teenage friends and the various things they do, like sex with various partners and genders, lots of drugs and lots of partying. Needless to say, it’s generated a bit of controversy across the pond.

Controversial Skins promo poster... I wonder where I can get a copy?

The show is also very good. I’ve only seen the first episode so far and, like all first episodes, it suffers from the problem of having to introduce everyone on the show in the first few minutes. They do this surprisingly well by having one of the main characters (Tony), calling all his friends on their cell phones.

Most of the plot of the episode centered around Tony’s efforts to get his friend Sid’s virginity gone, a notion which young Sid wholeheartedly supports. He’s somewhat disapointed when he finds out the girl Tony has in mind isn’t Tony’s girlfriend (who Sid has a massive crush on), but instead a girl who is best described as a few monoliths short of a Stonehenge.

I'd shag the lot of them. Does this make me a bad person?

The acting and writing were both top-notch in this episode, which several moments that had me laughing out loud. I’m sure it will probably have its more dramatic episodes as it goes on, and that’s fine with me. Life is comedy, drama and tragedy all rolled into one, after all.

Those who know me well enough will be unsurprised to hear that I’ll be watching the second episode tonight, and unless it’s really vomitizingly awful, I’m sure I’ll come back for more. I mean, how could I not, being who and what I am? I also look forward to the series being released on DVD here in the states (not surprisingly, there’s a lot of stuff that gets censored for broadcast here, since we’re a nation of whinning little babies).

One funny note: this may be the first time I’ve seen a TV series with characters speaking English and that English being frequently subtitled. Ah, the British. They may have invented the language, but they sure can’t speak it.

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