"Jamie Brittain has confirmed that he has decided to stop working on the television show Skins.

Brittain, who created the drama with his father Bryan Elsley, announced on Friday that he believes it is time for him to move on.

Speaking to the website AfterEllen, he explained that he is "really sad" to be leaving but added that he has faith in the production team.

"I've just said everything I want to say," he said. "It's time for new writers to come forward and portray their truth about teenagers."

Brittain, who explained that he now wants to write a film, also revealed that he believes the sixth series of Skins will be "amazing".

Brittain later confirmed the news of his exit on his Twitter page, saying: "Thanks for all the lovely messages. It's not an April Fools, I am leaving Skins. Sad to go, but don't worry, it's in very good hands."

The sixth series of Skins, which will comprise ten episodes, is expected to air next year."

Digital Spy

When you came up with the concept for Skins, what were your expectations? Did you know it would become so big?
"No, we didn't think it would be big at all. We thought quite the opposite - we thought it would be small. We thought we'd do one series that would go down alright and then never be heard of again, to be honest. So it was pretty mad when five years later we're still doing it. Very unexpected."

It's a new generation this series - when you switched before you had Effy for a link. Is it a clean break this time?
"Yes, there's no links to before, apart from a couple of teachers are still the same. Apart from that, yes, there's no link between the previous generation and this one at all. It's all entirely new. I think that gives you an entirely clean slate to start with and it means you've got no hangups or issues to deal with from previous series at all. It makes it very fresh and it feels very new and exciting."

Is it hard to create characters that we haven't seen before?
"It's very difficult. But we work very closely with all our writers to try very, very, very hard to keep our new characters distinct and interesting. It is very hard and it takes months and months and months, but if you do it right, which I think we have, you can get some really exciting characters."

Skins has covered so much in its stories too - is it hard to find new things to talk about?
"Sometimes it does feel that way but generally if you keep going and keep thinking to keep your mind working you can find new places to go. I sometimes think, 'How long can we keep going without running out of teen stories to tell?' but then I think of a show like Hollyoaks or EastEnderswhich keeps finding story after story after story for years and years on end, week in, week out. So if they can do it we can. I'm still surprised that we can keep coming up with new stuff. A lot of my young writers find new stories that we've never even considered before. That's one of the most exciting things about working on Skins - you get these young writers coming through with all these ideas which completely alienate some of those who are only five or six years out of teenage life, like me."

So what storylines can we expect in the fifth series?
"It's all about friendship, as usual. In the first series they were already friends, in the second generation everybody came together in the series, and in this one it's a mixture of the two. There are two groups of friends who kind of merge as the series goes on. That's the overarching storyline. It begins with an episode about a girl called Franky and how she makes friends with a group of already established girls. It kind of goes from there, really, and how she shakes things up and how she becomes a conduit to greater friendship between a larger group of people. In that we have stories about music and we have stories about sport and we have stories about brotherhood. There are quite diverse storylines - there's a lot going on."

We've heard this series will be a bit lighter - is that right?
"I think it's lighter. I took the series quite dark over the last couple of years which is fine. But I really wanted to do something as funny as possible this year. 'Light' is probably not the right word but it's certainly... maybe a bit more easygoing. There's a lot of laughs and a lot of fun. As usual there are dark places and there are unfortunate and sad events going on, but most of all it's about friendship and love and people helping each other out and people helping explore each other's personalities and stuff like that."

Are you wary of making Skins controversial and shocking for the sake of it?
"To be honest, I never felt like Skins is particularly controversial. I suppose I think that although there is a fair bit of sex and drugs and stuff like that, it's certainly not any more or any less than a lot of teenagers I could take you to right now. It's pretty realistic. I meet a lot of teenagers in the course of working on Skins and the general impression - not the universal impression but the general impression - is that it's fairly accurate and it's only slightly exaggerated."

What about things like Freddie's death last year - that shocked the fans a bit!
"Yeah. I wrote that episode. It's a tricky one, that. I feel like I've been punished quite a lot for that. The fans were very, very, very upset and annoyed and irritated by it, at least the more vocal fans online. I've sort of slightly refused to explain myself because I feel like to explain it would ruin the episode in a funny way. Needless to say, it's a very personal episode about dark, anxious, paranoid worry and things like that. I suppose if there's a point where you could say the series went too dark that's certainly it. But we're moving on now and we're looking to the future and this series is certainly nothing like those darker moments in series four. I've written two scripts this year and I actually set out to prove people wrong who said that all my scripts were dark explorations of psychosexual fantasies! The second episode is just very silly and good fun. It's all about Rich, who's a metalhead."

I heard that Rich is based on you...
"He's one of about 50 characters I've created for Skins who is in part based on me, yeah! I'm a complete music snob in real life and I basically dramatised that and thought it would be funny to take the p*ss out of myself. So he's an utter metal music snob and it's an episode based on that really. It's just very funny and has elements of romantic comedy as well. It's a good laugh, hopefully."

Do you have a favourite character this series?
"I do really like Rich. I also really like the character Nick. In some of the early stuff we've released of him a lot of people are a bit worried about him. They think he's going to be this jocky, sporty, up-himself a**ehole but I think when people see the episodes they will be very pleasantly surprised at what they get. He's a classic Skins character in that you see him, you think you know what you're getting, and then we hopefully completely destroy any preconceived notions you had about him."

How much are the stories based on your own experiences?
"I've kind of run out of my own stories to do! Now it's more feelings and emotions and just trying to draw on that. All our young writers this year are always drawing on their own experiences. I always say writing a Skins episode should be therapy. It's so bloody hard to write a Skins script that you have to kind of get something out of it at the end. If your reward is to work out why you hate your mother, then that might be quite good, as long as the episode's good I suppose!"

Are you worried about the fans' reactions to the new series?
"I'm fairly confident they'll like it, actually. It ticks all the boxes. It's fun, it's silly, there's plenty of laughter and lots of real emotions and all that kind of stuff. We've learnt a lot over the last few years and this is almost a best of in terms of the sort of episodes we do and the sort of jokes we do and the sort of characters we do. It's a real culmination of everything we've learnt over the last four or five years."

I suppose it's a testament to you that the fans get so attached to the characters, but at the same time it must make it difficult when you introduce a new generation.
"Yeah, it is a bit. It is quite funny to watch online everyone saying, 'You're ruining Skins by getting rid of the generation two characters', and you're like, 'We did it once before and it worked fine, so just trust us'. Skins loses some of its audience every year but it also finds a new audience every year so it's fine. It's not really a problem. It's obviously great to keep as many as possible."

Do you have any more news about the Skins movie?
"Bryan [Elsley]'s in the US at the moment working on American Skins and I'm obviously concentrating on UK Skins so it's slightly on the back burner at the moment. We literally just don't have time to focus on the film. I suppose as soon as both series are done, and they're almost done now, we should be able to get back into it and have some news for people pretty sharpish. We haven't had time to work on the film but it will happen, definitely."

You mentioned the American Skins - have you seen it?
"I haven't, actually. I've seen the first episode, which is basically the same as the UK's first episode. And I've read three or four of the scripts. It's very good. It starts off like UK series one and ends up going off in a completely different direction, and it's really good fun. It's a really good laugh and it's kind of American while still feeling like Skins. I've had virtually nothing to do with it because I've been so busy on UK Skins, but they've done a really good job on it. I'm very pleased with it. It's got my name on it and I'm happy to have my name on it!"

The fifth series of Skins begins on January 27 at 10pm on E4.

"After asking Heather Hogan some questions about her writing life I decided that who better to ask about Skins and fanfiction/art than none other than Skins God, Jamie Brittain. He is, after all, one half of the team that thought up and created the show in the first place. He is part of the reason this blog was created and he is part of the reason we're all sat here at our computers discussing Skins, creating Skins art and writing about our beloved favourite characters. Here's what was said:


With Skins only broadcasting 8 - 10 weeks of the year, what challenges do you have to overcome in order to keep fans connected with the show whilst it is off air?

Time mostly, because although the actual show is only on air for a couple of months, the creative team is generally at work for most of the year, meaning time to do extra material to keep people interested is limited
But we try something different every year, and try to put everything into it.

What role do you think the fans have in keeping themselves and others connected with the show?

Well, to an extent, the fans are very good at keeping themselves connected, with fan fiction, speculation, discussion etc. Despite the show's vast web presence, I think a lot of viewers come to the show through word of mouth and that's really useful.

Fanart and fanfiction can be very controversial - many creators don't like seeing their characters being used by other people. What is your opinion on the subject, given that you proudly advocate Skins as being 'fan friendly'?

I really don't mind what people do with fan fiction and fan art, in fact I have read and enjoyed fan fiction. I think there is a very clear distinction amongst the fans between what we do and what they do - the line between 'official' and 'unofficial' is clear. I rather like the notion of Skins having an 'Expanded Universe' in the manner of Star Wars and the such, created by fans on their own terms.

There are a lot of fangirls and boys in the Skins fandom, is there anything that used to/still makes you turn into a fanboy?

Totally. I'm a total comedy nerd, and really into bootleg recordings of comedians and stuff like that. Also, I met Alan Moore, who is my all time writing hero last month, and turned into a sweaty, nervous, stuttering fanboy. He was very nice though. Basically I'm a bit of a nerd, with pretensions to hipsterdom.

Brilliant! You say Alan Moore is your all time writing hero, have any writers and/or your dad (Bryan Elsley) had an influence on your writing style?

Dad, definitely. He pretty much taught me to write, though I'd like to think we're now very different writers. Also, people like Hubert Selby Jnr, Paul Schrader and David Lynch are massive influences on me.

With a new series and a movie just around the corner, is there anything at all you can tell us about them? Pleeease?!

Not really. Sorry. Season 5 is looking fucking awesome though (in my opinion, of course), and the movie is being written by Jack Thorne, who is the best writer in the world at the moment (that's not my opinion. That's fact) so it wont be anything but brilliant.

I really want Series 5 to be a surprise.

Which is going to be better series 5 or Skins US?

Series 5 - but then I would say that, because I'm working on this one, and Bryan is working on US. In all honesty I think they'll both be great, but they're different animals. US is mostly for people who've never seen the UK version, which doesn't mean people familiar with the show wont enjoy it, but series 5 is all new material, which to me, is just as exciting as the show skipping across the pond."

Thanx to Elspeth

"The kind of point of this sequence, I suppose, I mentioned it earlier, is that Freddie makes the mistake of thinking of leaving and Cook picks up on that, seeing his bag. And I suppose for that, he's punished, is what Neil(?) the scriptadapter would say if he was here. But that's his kind of transgression - he should've been there for her through thick and thin and realize that something was wrong with her and he eventually does, of course, but it's too little too late. "

Jamie Brittain – Writer of Episode 1

When myself, Lucy Kirkwood, Ben Schiffer and Neil Duncan went away to a hotel near Newmarket in the winter of 2008 to come up with series 4 of Skins, we had no idea what we were going to propose. We found that despite series 3 ending on a definite note for some characters, an ambiguous note for others, we had reached a point where we could literally take them anywhere.

So when we started talking about how the new series might start, we entertained, discussed and abandoned many, many scenarios. Weddings, festivals, road trips. All were discussed, all were thrown out. But one idea that emerged, the idea of a death opening the series seemed perfect – landing smack back in our laps and issuing a challenge. But we decided it should be a previously unseen character. These anonymous deaths seem to affect many youngsters (including myself) at some point.

I knew I wanted to write about Thomas, and wanted to write about him early in the series. We felt the character was slightly underused in series 3 and wanted to rectify that. We put the two things together. Thomas would be ep 1.

When I started to write the episode itself, I simply began writing with little idea where I was going. I wrote many drafts, very different from each other. All explored ideas of faith and identity. None satisfied me, or the execs, or the script editor, but we couldn’t work out why.

Then we did work it out. I was having trouble ‘feeling’ the ep – relating to it. Previous episodes I’ve written – this sounds like an awful cliché but it’s the best way of saying it– came from the heart

(you can read that as ‘balls’ if you want to be less sentimental). They were all cathartic processes about stuff that was going on in my life. With this script, I found myself more balanced and optimistic than ever before, but this, annoyingly, had stolen some of my mojo.

Thomas is a black, 17 year old Christian African. I’m a 24 year old, white, middle class Atheist. It would be hard for us to be more different. This was another problem. So I started to think about what we had in common. We’re both from fragmented origins, unsure of the location of our home. We both struggle to see the amazing things life has provided for us. We both have trouble with trust, and faith, and authority. From then on I started to build a story that I, and hopefully the fans, would care about and enjoy.

I have been accused by some of writing scripts that are too conceptual – scripts driven by my own warped interpretations of psychological or philosophical theories. You might have noticed that last year, my script (Cook) kicked against this, attempting to be a visceral, hedonistic non-stop teenage rampage with little time to stop and think. This time I hoped to do a more classic ‘Skins’ ep – emotional, funny, complex. And I realized my key was Pandora. A favourite character of mine (and the actress who plays her, Lisa – a favourite person), she commands the love and respect of many, by her fellow characters and by the fans. It was upon the tension between her and Thomas, and their eventual break up that I could hang the emotional crux of the episode, empowering and justifying the discussion about faith and identity that characterises it and ultimately leads to the break up itself. When I worked out that, the ep came alive in my hands.

One of the fun things about the episode is that I got to introduce a new recurring adult character. We knew we wanted a new college director. I knew I wanted Chris Addison to play him – if you don’t know his work on radio and TV I suggest you Google him right now. I’d met Chris at the British Comedy Awards last year, and, though I was starstruck I managed to ask him if he was interested. He said he was – he’d enjoyed his ‘Thick Of It’ co-star Peter Capaldi’s work (Sid’s Dad) and fancied a bit himself. So all was set.

But what to call him? He needed a good name. I mulled it over for hours and finally decided – David Blood. Now, if I’m proud of anything in my career, it’s coming up with that name. Doesn’t the character just come alive when you hear it? Maybe I’m the only one who sees my true genius here.

I hope you enjoyed the episode. It would be lying to say I enjoyed writing it – writing is never really much fun – but I’m proud of it and hope you think we are continuing to do the show and characters justice. And if you think my ep was intense, just wait for next week’s. That’s right…it’s time for Naomily, and we’re just warming up.

• O 4º episódio da série 4 será o mais divertido.
• Naomi e Emily poderão beijar mais do que uma pessoa esta temporada.
• As audições para a 5ª Temporada serão no próximo ano. Provavelmente para jovens britânicos, mas nunca se sabe, talvez exista um personagem brasileiro/australiano/coloca-aqui-o-teu-país
• Ao que parece a fama não subiu à cabeça de Lily e Kat.
• A 4ª temporada não acaba como Jamie estava á espera, mas isso é normal.
• Provavelmente não vai haver um trailer para esta temporada.
• Sobre mortes Jamie apenas diz que em Skins tudo pode acontecer.
• Não vão existir os Lost Weeks (pequenos vídeos que descrevem o se passou entre uma temporada e a outra)
• Com a chegada da data prevista vão haver imensas coisas para nos deliciar-mos.
• O livro de Skins está quase a ser lançado.
• O filme espera-se que aconteça no próximo ano.
• A melhor temporada até agora será a 4ª na opinião de Jamie.
• Ficou no ar a hipótese de os próprios fans enviarem músicas originais para fazerem parte da 4ª Temporada.
• A forma mais fácil de evoluir como roteirista é consumir muita TV, livros, vida, filmes, tudo!
• Quanto à última cena da 4ª Temporada Jamie espera uns "WOW" de nós!
• Jamie acha que o artigo sobre Skins no Wikipédia está óptimo! (escrito na maior parte por @ffffelix)

• The 4th episode of series 4 will be the most fun.
• Naomi and Emily could kiss more than one person in this season.
• The auditions for Season 5 will be next year. Probably for young British people, but you never know, maybe there is a character Brazilian / Australian / place-here-your-country
• It seems that the fame did not changed Lily and Kat.
• The end of 4th season it´s not what Jamie was waiting, but this is normal.
• Probably there will not be a trailer for this season.
• About deaths, Jamie only says that anything can happen in Skins.
• There will be no Lost Weeks before this season  (short videos that describe the developments between one season and another)
• There will be many things for our delight before season 4.
• The Book of Skins is about to be released.
• The film is expected to happen next year.
• The best season from all seasons will be the 4th in the opinion of Jamie.
• There´s a possibility of skins fans submit original music to be part of Season 4.
• The easiest way to develop as a writer is to consume a lot of TV, books, life, movies, everything!
• From the last scene of Season 4 Jamie expects from us a big "WOW"!
• Jamie thinks that the article about Skins in Wikipedia is great! (written mostly by @ ffffelix).

@jamiebrittain To clarify. Skins will hopefully have a fifth series, but we have not yet been re-commissioned. It will have a new cast. We will hold open auditions to cast it. I don't know any details beyond that. We're still working on series 4!

@jamiebrittain Para clarificar. Skins terá, esperemos, uma 5ª série mas ainda não fomos  de novo recomendados para a produzir. Vai haver um novo cast. E abriremos novas audições para o encontrar. Não sei mais nada além disto. Ainda estamos a trabalhar na série 4.

@jamiebrittain To clarify. Skins will hopefully have a fifth series, but we have not yet been re-commissioned. It will have a new cast. We will hold open auditions to cast it. I don't know any details beyond that. We're still working on series 4!

• Não se sabe se estão ainda à procura de escritores para a série americana de Skins.
• JJ vai estar interessado romanticamente em alguém!
• Esta não será a última temporada de Skins britânica! Iupiiii!!!
• Vão haver novos pesonagens com papéis significativos na série 4.
• Não haverá nenhuma cena de sexo na banheiro entre Emily e Naomi! (ahahaha, que perguntas:)
• O pesonagem que terá maior desenvolvimento será o JJ
• Na 5ª série o cast será substituído outra vez
• Lara (nova personagem ) terá um papel importante na 4ª temporada
• Sobre se a série americana terá a mesma linguagem Jamie responde que existem regras americanas...até alguém as mudar!
• Nenhum personagem vai partilhar os episódios( vão faltar alguns... )
  
• O mais interessante personagem será a Effy.
• À questão sobre se  os personagens antigos vao entrar nesta série Jamie apenas disse "no comment"
• Pelo que Jamie disse vai mesmo haver um SKINS THE MOVIE
• Sobre se os personagens vão voltar Jamie diz que não nesta série....mas que além disso...
• Vai haver montes de nudez nesta série!
• Sobre melhores episódios da 4 série jamie refere o 2 , o 5 e o 7.
• Vão existir alguns novos personagens.
• Dá-se muito bem com Kaya, Ollie e Jack
• A relação de Katie e JJ será explorada.
• Vão existir muitas raparigas interessadas no nosso casal Naomily.
• Na próxima primavera vão começar as primeiras audições para a série 5.
• Cook e Naomi são apenas amigos? of course!!! (parece-me ironia:)loool
• O Cook vai mostrar várias versões de si mesmo.
• Muitas festas!
• A série 4 será mais sombria que a 3.
• Para o episódio final vamos precisar de lenços!!! (o que será que vem aí?)
• Sobre se já pensou colocar brasileiros na série jamie diz que adora os fans brasileiros e que até comentou em como gostaria de fazer um Skins Brasil:)
• Estão a filmar os dois últimos episódios.
• O episódio 8 será um Everyone episódio.
• Sobre com que pesonagem Jamie teria sexo este respondeu Tony!!! lool
• Vão haver intrigas e lutas entre os personagens!
• Vamos ver muito de Pandora
• Os personagens antigos serão mencionado na próxima temporada.
• Cook e  Emily não serão melhores amigos