Review: Skins (UK)

This ugly, raunchy drama may be the best on-screen representation of teen life we’ve seen yet. TW: Eating disorders, mention of suicide.

Church bells are ringing, birds are chirping, and Tony Stonem rises from under his bedsheets, decorated to look as if there were a naked man and woman on both sides of him. He watches an older lady across the street get out of the shower and get dressed for work as his younger sister trails down the sidewalk after a long night out, to say the least.

And so begins Skins. A near perfect pilot episode, creators Jamie Brittain and Bryan Elsley introduce each of the eight teenagers that we follow throughout the first two seasons (or “series” as they call it in the UK), each episode focusing in on one specific character. Whether it’s setting one of their friends up to lose their virginity to a girl affectionately nicknamed “Nips,” buying drugs off a man recently checked-out of a mental institution with a cartoonishly large handle bar mustache, or going to house party and having a girl overdose on an imported Iranian carpet, the events of Skins can feel a bit cliché, over-exaggerated, or downright ridiculous; however, combined with the cast of nearly all newcomers in this low budget British drama, it feels almost as if this is the closest representation we can get to real teen life in the modern day and age.