Old article about Skins

Teenage dreams . . .

The new series of Skins starts on E4 tonight, if you are me (which you probably aren’t) or started last night, if you’re you (which seems far more likely). I love Skins. Do you watch it? You should. I interviewed Sir Ian McKellen a few months ago, and he loves it, too, so it’s not just for kids. It’s about a group of teenagers at a sixth-form college in Bristol, who are all beautiful and messed-up and dressed entirely from TopShop and H&M. It’s basically like Hollyoaks, but after the watershed and not godawful.

It works, essentially, because it lies. Skins takes all the things that teenagers think they ought to enjoy and tells them that, yes, they are wonderful. They get drunk in parks, but don’t get bothered by tramps. They fall asleep on hillsides and wake up to beautiful sunrises and artfully smeared eye make-up, rather than torrential rain or sex crimes. They have long, angsty, nostalgic conversations about how much they’ve always meant to each other, and nobody shouts: “Get a life!” or “But you only met four months ago”. They always get into pubs, the sun is always yellow and nobody ever needs a coat. When they get caught with porn, their friends completely forget about it within minutes. It’s basically nothing like being a teenager at all.

For an adult, then, the appeal is obvious. It’s a sort of indulgent, vicarious time machine, through which you can filter out your long-term stink, terrible clothes, paranoia and inability to get a girlfriend, and remember only the three or four short-term good bits.

I can’t imagine, though, why real teenagers don’t just find it terribly depressing. Why doesn’t it bother them that their lives aren’t that much fun? Why doesn’t it bother them that the kids in Skins don’t spend all their time sitting around watching Skins?

Labels: artigo , entrevistas , interview , Interviews/Photoshoots , Skins