Skins

SO U.S. VIEWERS this week will get their first chance to see what a teenage series that actually pushes what teenagers do and think about looks like: sex, drugs, drinking, and bad behavior. It's called SKINS.

BRYAN ELSLEY recalls the humbling conversation in 2005 that inspired “Skins,” the popular and provocative British series he helped create that will have its American premiere Sunday night on BBC America. He was preparing for a pitch meeting and decided to run his concepts for TV shows — a global warming drama, a political corruption thriller — past his 20-year-old son, Jamie Brittain.

Words were not minced. “He said: ‘These are all boring, middle-aged ideas for boring, middle-aged television executives. Why can’t you think of something with a little bit more oomph?,’ ” Mr. Elsley said. When Dad challenged Son to come up with a better alternative, Mr. Brittain cited the morally oppressive, unfun nature of most adolescent-oriented shows on television. “He said that being a teenager, by definition, means behaving badly, having sex, flirting with drink and drugs,” Mr. Elsley said, and all teenage dramas either pretend such things don’t happen or make sure that if they do, “people die as a consequence.”

“He said, ‘Why don’t you do a teen show that just for once really has some edge?’ ” Mr. Elsley said.

The BBC America audience might not be so surprised. But to a nation that still clucks over Degrassi and Gossip Girl, it should, by rights, be a big shock to the system.

(Of course, we in Canada are going to be spared for now, BBC Canada doesn't seem to be running the show. At least I don't think they are. The BBC Canada website and online schedule is so bad that it's hard to tell.)

Jill Golick wrote about Skins around the time it went on the air in Great Britain. Thanks to a couple of pals with UK Itunes Store accounts, I've seen the entire first season of Skins and about half the second.

The New York Times Preview article also had some interesting info on how the room for Skins works.

To live up to the promise of reasonable authenticity that “Skins” was sold on, Mr. Elsley, then 44, hired a team of television veterans, along with his son (who receives co-creator credit) and a group of writers whose average age is 22 and average experience is nil. Then he formed a sort of mentor-and-newbie laboratory.

Holed up in the basement of the Northern London production office, Mr. Elsley’s creative coalition watches gold-star teenage fare like “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” every day. To keep the focus simple for a staff inexperienced with juggling multiple story lines, “Skins” was structured so that the raucous tone stayed the same but each week’s episode was devoted to a single character.

When it came to developing knowing dialogue and convoluted scrapes, Mr. Elsley said, his youthful employees were the gift that kept on giving. But he admitted to one truth-stretcher: The fictional friends — a mix of races, religions, classes and sexual orientation — might not be so nonchalant about their differences in real life. “It aspires to a certain way of being,” he said.

I actually think the show loses the plot a bit in its second season. But they sure aren't concerned about burning through story. And look at the bold move they've adopted for season 3:

No one can say that Mr. Elsley and company don’t mind breaking rules. Although the “Skins” actors are now star-sighting-worthy in England, the entire cast except for Kaya Scodelario, who plays Tony’s younger sister, Effy, has been replaced for Season 3.

The thing that's interesting here, is that Degrassi took several seasons to accomplish this. You don't have the American problem of stars getting too big for their britches, or repeating yourself.

This is one of those happy accidents where it bears repeating that Canada is a bit further ahead than the United States (but nowhere near as far out as the UK.) In the United States, you have the whiplash-inducing spectacle of Miley Cyrus (and before her, Hayden Whatshername from Heroes, Britney, etc, etc.) being hyper-sexualized in terms of image, and then the simultaneous recoil when, lo and behold, the very thing that you do to make money off teens comes back and bites you in the ass once they show that, um, you know what, they're teenagers.

Even Degrassi -- which was considered bold in the USA for the frankness with which it presented teen concerns, did so with that teachable, "there are always horrible consequences to every actions" model that underlines the hypocrisy of the American approach.

Skins is refreshing and almost transcendant -- even though what it is is actually a pretty by the numbers teenage soap. But goddamn, it's a whole lot more real and engaging than anything you ever saw on The O.C. (And they actually got to have actors who weren't 30.)

Yet another case of where the bald ideological nature of the current Canadian government guarantees further marginalization of the audience. I grok fully the kind of creative that Skins has. I know that, reading the polls and surveys, that Canadians could handle a franker show like this. But with the twin shibboleths of always having to make a U.S. sale and the new Philistine Guard hanging over every ounce of funding, it's not going to happen anytime soon.

Here it is, kids, the show that could appeal to a younger audience.

And we can't make it.

Chew on that one awhile.

EDIT: Will Dixon points out that the reason why Skins can't be found on the BBC Canada Website is that they don't have it. (It's actually a Channel 4 show so that's hardly surprising.) Instead, the Canadian Pay Channel SuperChannel has the rights, and has been airing both seasons for some time.

If you've never heard of SuperChannel, well, that's another story.

But for the record, old Will did get there first.