Skins is a seven season British show that focuses on a group of teens for two seasons during their last two years at “college,” which is our high school, with the exception of the seventh season which revisits three characters as adults. Each episode runs around forty-five minutes. There is a lot of sex and drug use. It probably hit my radar because I was a huge Anglophile and would watch anything with a British accent. It probably got some critical buzz and without much thought, I threw it in the queue. When Netflix notified me that it was going to expire in a month, it finally became a priority.

The main reason to watch Skins is to see a lot of great actors get their start: Dev Patel, Jack O’Connell, Daniel Kaluuya, Nicholas Hoult, Game of Thrones’ Hannah Murray and Joe Dempsie. There are also a few recurring roles for notable actors such as Olivia Colman and Peter Capaldi. There are also a few actors who will seem vaguely familiar but have not quite escaped the stratosphere and become recognizable to American audiences: Luke Pasqualino, Dakota Blue Richards, Sean Teale and Sebastian de Souza. It is a little disappointing that the women of the series seem to get less of a career glow up, but I would definitely promote Laya Lewis, Freya Mavor and Jessica Sula who made characters that could have been one dimensional and annoying into riveting portraits.

I actually considered not watching Skins after the first episode because I did not like the characters. There is a more mature Dennis the Menace vibe of wreaking havoc on adults and property with no consequences that is dissonant with the rest of the show which tackles the surface, collective frivolity of teenage life contrasted with the deeper issues faced by each teen when alone or at home. I stayed because of the gravity of the world behind the façade, from neglect to inadequate, but well-intentioned love balanced and explained the rampant self-medicating occurring in most scenes. As a teen, I would have never hung out with most of these kids with the exception of Jal, Rich, JJ, Grace, and Naomi and Emily before they simply became melodramatic love interests with no other interests (if their relationship was more stable, then I would have hung out with them), but as an adult seeing the entirety of their lives, I was also invested and cared about Michelle, Chris, Cassie, Sid, Cook, Katie, Liv, Mini and Alo. Some of the best scenes are when we see the teens as individuals interacting with the adults around them.

Skins had a tone problem. On one hand, they wanted to show that the real world affected these kids, and they were not immune to death. (A cow gets accidentally exploded and while it was not played for laughs, it was so spectacularly insensitive and rushed over that it is enough of a reason not to watch the series, which initially treated death with some respect and reverence then began using it as a gimmick to add a jolt to their storylines). On the other hand, it ultimately pulled punches in the lack of consequences for most of their wild antics, including when those actions would have had devastating consequences on the financial health of their home. I am specifically thinking of Alo’s storyline since his family’s living depends on the health of the farm, which Alo thoughtlessly, but understandably squanders, and Nick taking his father’s secret stash of money. While the series does a great job of showing us how kids can do horrible things without being horrible people, it should not protect them from foreclosure or ruin. Thomas’ storyline is the closest that the series gets to seriously addressing poverty and the parentification of children, but ultimately it devolves into a cartoonish storyline in which the teen gets the upper hand against the adults in an eating contest. Make up your mind. Do you want to be unflinching or a kids’ show?

Skins is one of the rare BBC shows to become infected by American greed. Usually the British do something well then stop when the story is done without treating their creation like ATMs and letting it go on long after the creative juices stop flowing regardless of how much the masses clamor for more. There is a point in the fourth season when the series jumped the shark, but there were frequent signs earlier that artistic integrity fled the set, and the series became infected with soap opera tropes instead of a drama focused on real teen issues. It was as if the series got tired and wanted to explore different genres by injecting horror, supernatural and crime dramas into the series. As someone who adores horror and supernatural themes, I would have been delighted to watch a show about teens battling serial killers, homicidal hillbillies (or the British equivalent) or rabid drug dealers, but we never signed up for it. If all of it was leading to a spin off series where a young teen hoodlum discovered that he would make a great vigilante against evil people who stalked teens, sign me up, but it never happened. What made the first season so strong was that they were ultimately kids who could not handle everything themselves and often had to be rescued from their own foolishness or face the real threat.

I also hate when someone clearly lost or stopped consulting the series’ Bible to remain consistent and just decided to do things. So does the UK not have a social services agency because even the kids with parents that cared for them would be absent while the kids ran amok? How can you afford so much cocaine? The series basically wanted the least amount of adult supervision to give the kids the most opportunity to travel, have sex, party and do drugs uninterrupted. It would not be that annoying if some storylines were clearly contrived to create the most melodrama. There is a ridiculous storyline where a girl in the group seems to be kidnapped as collateral for another person in the group to drive drugs to a location. Fine. Sure. A different person in the group also figures it out and tries to help him catch up with them. Everyone gets angry at the person driving because he disappears without explanation, but no one ever has a conversation about the fact that the drug dealer is a bad guy that should not be trusted and how everything went wrong because of him even though it is the event that starts a season. I absolutely hate shows that do not reflect simple basics about human nature. There is at least one person in the group that knew what happened, but never talks about it with any other character until the end. No way! Also the series resorted to love triangles so often until it literally became a degree away from incestuous.

While Skins had some high points, a number of emotionally complex and notable scenes and featured the best acting, I cannot really recommend it because it feels as if it needed to cut a lot of fat and be more consistent rather than pervy and exploitive. On some level, it felt as if adults wanted to watch kids get down without going to jail. I also hate watching food get wasted and property destroyed for no good reason.