During the previous three years, while I worked at a TV production company, I used to take my lunch break and watch Skins . Back then, it was always LUNCH BREAK ('cause it was the most exciting part of my day) and it was then that I figured out the depth into which the show goes.
On the surface, it's a television series about a group of rambunctious Bristol teenagers in their two final years of school. Each episode brings one of the characters to the forefront, draping the story on them. The way the show is shot, the direction, the pace, the soundtrack, all shift to reflect the focal character. The cast changes every two years giving the sense of a show repeating a Pilot Season/Sophomore Season pattern, keeping it fresh.
Skins has gotten a lot of flak in the press about being sensationalistic and glamorizing a drugs & sex lifestyle for the youth of today's Britain. To the same points of contention one could argue that the show simply reflects the way the teenagers of now act. From my own experiences in the U.K. I find myself siding with the latter view.
My own personal theory about the show is that each episode works more like a short film in an anthology rather than an installment of a TV-serial. That does make for an inconsistent tone but what keeps me watching -and what I hope will get more people to watch and keep the show on air- is that no matter how each episode may rate in one's subjective view there's always something truly beautiful in each of them that makes the whole hour worthwhile.
The Series 4 premiere starts with a dialogue-less four minute sequence. In those four minutes Skins manages to catch up with all of the characters and set up the connecting thread that's gonna push this year's stories forward. Meanwhile, it's four of the most wonderfully photographed minutes of television I have ever seen.
I could go on for paragraphs and paragraphs but really all I need to say is this: Four minutes of no dialogue, in this day and age where TV-stories suffocate, squeezed in between commercials. Aren't you even the least bit curious to see this show that breathes?
Line of the night:
Obi-Wan Kenobi is like God but with better weapons.
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