SKINS 4.1

WRITER: Jamie Brittain
DIRECTOR: Neil Biswas

In the first of a trial-season of guest reviews, regular reader Dan Lester takes a look at the series 4 premiere of E4's teen-drama Skins...

[SPOILERS] Skins 2.0 returns with a bang, or rather a snort, as the first couple of minutes of series four begin with an impressive tracking sequence of a club so chaotic, rampant with sex and drugs, and characteristically overblown that it threatens to overshadow the anarchy seen in the opening moments of Syfy's Caprica Pilot. The sequence climaxes with an unknown teenage girl jumping to her death off a balcony into the crowd below. It's a sinister opening, but the episode fails to build on it, as the action soon gives way to fourty minutes of repetitive, emotionless, and ultimately tedious nihilism.

The episode centers around Thomas (Merveille Lukeba) who, having been running the clubnight at which the teenage girl committed suicide, is confronted with a sense of guilt for her death. Police confront Thomas and the rest of the characters, whilst the club owner attempts to pay him off to keep quiet. Meanwhile the attempts of his friends to comfort him come to no avail.

The heart of the plot lies in the unstable relationship between Thomas and the ever-irritating Pandora (Lisa Backwell), following on from Pandora cheating on Thomas with Cook in the last series. As a result of his confused emotional state, Thomas grows increasingly cold toward Pandora, and is drawn to an attractive singer who he first notices in church, and in typical Skinsian style, within twenty minutes they’re having sex in a hospital laundry room. He later confesses to Pandora, and is subsequently deserted by both her and his friends, and expelled from school for his part in the drug-fuelled suicide, before finally concluding that, yawn, he is still in love with Pandora.

The problem with Skins all too often lies in it’s over ambition. The episode would appear to be an attempt by the writers to capture the kind of blank, emotionless nihilistic youth fictionalized in the writing of Bret Easton Ellis in, for example "Less Than Zero". But Lukebar's performance is frankly not good enough to carry it, whilst the script itself strikes a bizarre balance of melodrama and eccentric comedy sections that allows the episode function neither as the intelligent examination of youth culture that it might aim to be, nor as the entertaining teen show which the majority of it's audience watch it for.

But more frustrating than this is the writers' refusal to allow the episodes to more widely focus on the group as a whole, instead closely examining one character at a time. Without the interaction between the cast, Skins lacks of the kind of story and character development that made it's first couple of seasons such compelling viewing, whilst the current characters are not nearly as likeable as the likes of Sid and Cassie were.

But it's not all bad; the cinematography is stylish and the music selections are as brilliantly eclectic as ever (featuring Grizzly Bear as well as lesser known acts like Ida Maria and Oumou Sangare), but with the third series being relatively poorly received in comparison to the first two, and another entire cast reshuffle recently having been confirmed, the writers don't have long to salvage something from Skins' current incarnation.

28 JANUARY 2010: E4 / E4 HD, 10PM

Would you like to guest review a TV show not currently covered by Dan's Media Digest? If so, please get in touch. I'm especially interested in talented writers who would like to review Desperate Housewives on Channel 4 and Supernatural on LivingTV, but other suggestions are welcome. I can't guarantee your work will be posted here, so please don't take offence if your submission doesn't get used. It's also uncertain if my "guest review season" will become a regular fixture, so I'd appreciate some feedback on the above review from readers. Thank you.