by Tim Williams
Every year a new American High School TV series hits our screens, I mean think of how many there have been:Gossip Girl, One Tree Hill, The OC, Dawson’s Creek (this contributor’s personal favourite), The Young Americans, Popular etc etc. It’s even arguable that shows such as Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Smallville fit into this genre (but they have wacky crossover appeal that means nerdy sci-fi geeks will be into them, but will that affect ratings by alienating the general populace – I imagine this is a fine line that many TV execs often tread). Hell, it’s even come full circle this year with the emergence of the updated version of Beverley Hills 90210 – arguably the show that first started this trend – this time simply called 90210 (you know that shit is hip). But yeah how many people noticed when this genre slowly slinked its way into homemade British TV? I’m including the full genre title i.e. American High School TV Show. Not just High School TV Show, I mean we’ve had shows like Grange Hill and Byker Grove. Nope, I’m talking about prime time baby. I’m talking about Skins.
Now, everyone knows Skins and I do mean everybody. When I was recently in Russia it was even huge over there, so huge that when I was at a party somebody put the theme music on over the decks and everyone started going mental on the dance floor. I didn’t get that at all – I mean the theme music isn’t even that good, but I guess it was testament to the show’s popularity. Even in the UK it’s everywhere – advertised on billboards, at the cinema, in weekend newspaper supplements, the week its second season premiered Nicholas Hoult was one of the top guests on Jonathan Ross, Dev Patel has gone on to receive international notoriety as the Slumdog Millionaire etc etc – and it can pretty much be described as the great white hope for British TV, and everyone tunes in every week. Now granted, a lot of people I know complain about it being crap constantly, but they still tuned in, and granted, I was one of those people. There was something slightly off about it that I just couldn’t put my finger on, I guess it just became so ingrained in the collective consciousness of the nation that it actually did become unmissable.
Now, why exactly was this? Upon its arrival a lot of people heralded it as groundbreaking as, with its scriptwriting team with an average age of 21, it claimed to present an accurate portrayal of the youth of today by featuring heavy swearing, drug use, promiscuity and homosexuality. Now, I don’t watch a lot of British TV shows but I’m pretty sure prime time shows such as This Life, Queer as Folk and Shameless had already tackled these issues and featured them in their respective content, so I don’t really think it was that groundbreaking. Neither is it that realisitic: I used to describe the unrealistic bits in Skins as the wacky side, when it would come up in discussion, and I felt that that was where it fell down. It was attempting to be hyper realistic but then would have all these dumb moments where someone would get hit by a bus or have a rope ladder conveniently packed in their luggage by their mother, or would get involved with local gangsters who were built up as badasses but would be easily thwarted by our heroes etc etc. I couldn’t understand why it was included, or why the show was such a success.
Then in the finale of season three it finally clicked and I finally figured it out (that kinda makes me seem like I didn’t think about anything else for three years, this isn’t the case but I probably should have seen it earlier). In this episode, Cook and Effy leave Bristol in a stolen car and go to some unnamed hick town to find Cook’s father and hang out with him for a bit, only to be pursued and found by JJ and Freddy, who then have to compete in a race against some crazy locals for some reason (I forget why, it was on a while ago yeah?) and then have a fight with them and escape on a boat. I mean what? I know its fiction but this kind of stuff doesn’t happen in England, it sounds more like something that would happen in an American High School TV Show….waitaminute…that was it! The hip young screenwriters from Skins, who had undoubtedly been brought up on a wholesome diet of the best imports of the genre, were merely recycling clichéd old ideas from the American High School TV Show and applying them to the hip young promiscuous drug culture that was now prevalent in the UK. That was why the show hadn’t really worked for me, why I had felt like something had been off about it since the start. Like I don’t know if it was simply because those other shows were set in America, or because I was younger then or those shows had better scripts or actors or what, but every time Luke Perry would steal a car in 90210 I’d believe it because he was a badass, but whenever Nicholas Hoult would steal a car in Skins I’d just think it was stupid and that there was no way this posh twat would know anything about how to hotwire a car. The same can be said of many other occasions in both shows like when Pacey Witter spat in his high school teacher’s face I found it powerful and believable (”No Sir, THIS is spitting in the face of the education system”) whereas when some idiots in Skins stood up to their teachers and started trashing the school I just thought it was ridiculous and lowered the whole tone of the show. And those are only two examples of these incidents, I’m sure if I had the ass I could go back through each series and pick out countless more. So yeah, I guess it comes back to my original point – clichés sell in television. I guess you just need to know how to adapt them and repackage them so that nobody notices, as Skins has rather cleverly (inadvertently?) done.
