It’s ten years since E4’s teen drama Skins first crashed its way onto British TV in a day-glo display of sex, drugs, and raucous house parties.
For all its ups and downs, wild exaggerations and mis-steps, Skins became emblematic of the nu-rave, MySpace, and ‘indie’ era – a snapshot of teen life before the dawn of iPhones, streaming, and Instagram.
For six full series – and one final run that we don’t speak of – Skins gave us a jumble of young characters in plots both rebellious and studious, veering from clubbing escapades to weighty meditations on mortality, mental health, abortions, and accidentally buying three times as much ‘spliff’ as you meant to.
It was messy and ambitious, but it worked. In the TV landscape, Skins was a teenager – just like you.
Skins TV Series - In pictures
The show was stylistically daring, just like you when you wore a cardigan outside for the first time, or decided straightening your fringe was a good idea. The main relationship threads were typical teen drama fare, but elsewhere Skins wasn’t afraid to throw its young viewers a curveball – from the jarring cover of Cat Stevens’ Wild World that closed out Series 1, to Tony’s bizarre university open day vision quest in Series 2.
Warning: clip contains strong language
Then there was the way it constantly revamped its image every two years, shedding its skin and presenting a new identity across three ‘Generations’. At the time it was a confounding move when the creators announced that Series 3 would involve a whole new set of characters as Tony’s younger sister Effy and her friends started at Roundview College – and while many would have loved continuing with ‘Generation One’, it mean Skins stayed 16 years old forever.
Skins was obsessed with finding the latest music, just like your teenage self. Each episode had its own eclectic playlist made from the writers’ favourite songs alongside brand new tracks that had been either scouted out online or sent directly into the show. Every week the track list went up on the E4 website, meaning the soundtrack to Skins could be the soundtrack to your own mild teenage misadventures.
10 pop culture moments that will turn 10 in 2017
The show was, like teenage you, overly angsty at times. We all remember the drinking and the parties, but it wasn’t afraid to go way, way dark. Before Game of Thrones, Skins was here to kill off all your favourite characters in shocking manners, from Chris’ sudden brain haemorrhage, to Freddie’s violent demise at the hands of a baseball bat-wielding rogue psychologist. Were these realistic, relatable storylines? No. Were they pure teenage life-is-SO-unfair melodrama? Absolutely.
Warning: clip contains strong language
Skins revelled in teenage voices – championing young writers like Daniel Kaluuya, who played Posh Kenneth in Generation One, and wrote some Generation Two episodes. One of the series’ creators, Jamie Brittain was in his early twenties. This was a young show for young people, one that looked and sounded like a young person because that’s exactly who was making it.
The show’s identity wasn’t just in its permanent youthfulness – it was uniquely British, with its casual hedonism, sweary dialogue, and nonchalant drug use. A Skins house party wasn’t a slick, My Super Sweet 16 ball – it was jumping around someone’s living room to a Skream remix while your mate puked in the corner. It’s no surprise that an attempt to transplant the series to America on MTV lasted just one season.
Ten years on, Skins remains an inauthentic but highly entertaining slice of late 00s British teenage life – and, unlike you, it’ll never grow up.
Skins Series 1-7 is streaming now on All 4 and Netflix
