Warning: spoilers a go go.

Ah yes, Skins. The budget indie show which seems to have snowballed a minor youth subculture. I’ve already sung the praises of series one, but I think that the program makers have achieved that rare feat of making the second series even better than the first, so it’s worth discussing a few of the changes between the two.

The first episode of series one established the characters as hedonistic Bristolian lower-sixth form students with a penchant for sex, drugs and wild parties. This is what unites them, but as the series progressed each episode fleshed out the background of one particular character, establishing why they had ended up at this place in their lives. Often their chaotic lives was shown to be the result of their parent’s chaotic lives. The series ends with Tony being hit by a bus, and the cast (including the supposedly unconscious Tony) performing a sureal rendition of Cat Steven’s Wild World.

Given that we’ve already established who these kids are and that like to party, there was no need to labour these points in the second series, and they rightly move to the background. This allows a narrative to develop over the course of series two which is not confined to developing individual characters. So the second series feels more epic in scope than the first, sometimes feeling like a Holyoaks-style soap opera, though thankfully without the contrived moralising.

The Best…

One thing program makers tend to do when making a second series of anything is try to make things bigger, better, faster, louder! to compensate for working with an idea which is no longer original. This usually makes for bad TV, as it’s ideas which make for great viewing, not special effects; and making a show ‘bigger’ often means destroying it’s believability, and the breaking the viewer’s empathy with the characters. Series two episode one of Skins was actually rather low key, especially compared to the first episode of series one. Several characters have been effectively written out; Tony, who dominated series one, is still recovering from his accident, Cassie is convalescing in Scotland, and the rest of the cast are far more subdued as a result of these loses. Even Bill Bailey, playing Maxxie’s dad, is understated. But the story expands and unfolds as the season develops, charting Tony’s recovery and the dynamics of the relationships and events that unfold. There are deaths, pregnancies, affairs and expulsions. The college and the teachers within it are featured much less, although there are still a few great jibs at adult authority. During the final episode the kid’s behaviour is blamed on “Asbo culture. Or Arabs, one of the ‘A’s.”

The penultimate episode in particular deserves a mention. By this point, Chris is living in a tower block flat, which is frequented by most of the other kids. He has a brain haemorrhage and dies in front of Cassie; she panics, packs a bag and heads to New York. Sitting in a cafe without any appetite, a guy finishing his shift takes pity on her and gives her a bed, without expecting anything in return. He is an artist, in the sense that we all are; he’s a photographer, and his flat is festooned with black and white prints of his estranged girlfriend. LCD Soundsystem plays as Cassie looks at these. ‘Like a rat in a cage/Pulling minimum wage/New York, I Love You, but you’re bringing me down’.

Call me a hopeless romantic if you like, but it is, I think, quite beautiful. Wanting to escape, to lose yourself in the big city, is something I can understand. North American Scum was featured earlier in the series as well, so clearly someone on the writing team likes Sound of Silver. The matching of music to scenes is almost as effective as during the first series. If you want to watch the series again then bittorrent is your friend; unfortunately, by the time it gets to DVD all the good music will have been culled for copyright reasons.

…and the Rest

There are a few slip ups. The new character Sketch is not developed well, and rather seems to be an excuse to take the piss out of the Welsh. Also, the introduction of Sid’s extended family seem to be an excuse to take the piss out of the Scottish. These, and a few other missed gags, meant that the series took a while to get up to speed. But all in all it’s been excellent, especially compared to the competition. Series two of Torchwood was very mixed, managing to do the opposite of the first series by starting and ending poorly but benefiting from a few good episodes in the middle, such as the trilogy based around Owen’s death. Problem is, that when you go down the ‘bigger and better’ route with something as already over-the-top as Torchwood, it starts to look a bit silly. And, as Madam Miaow points out, much of the plot was jacked from Angel.

Ashes to Ashes was a spin off from Life on Mars, but failed to match the excellence of its predecessor. The character of DI Alex Drake is nowhere near as likeable as DCI Sam Tyler, and the actor playing her doesn’t quite manage to fill the shoes of the formidable John Simm. The ‘bigger and better’ approach results in some ridiculously unbelievable plots- Drake and Hunt manage to breaking into a top-secret military weapons research site with minimal preparation, before being rescued by the rest of the team who have made no preparations whatsoever! Finally, some dodgy politics are evident in the last episode, as the programme makers encourage us to applaud Gene Hunt as he berates a senior officer who dares to criticise Hunt’s violent, racist and homophobic policing methods.

So, Skins stands tall above the competition. The programme makers have said that the characters from the first two series will be absent from series three- as they’ve all gone off to university- and the third series will focus on a new group of kids starting sixth form, revolving around Tony’s sister Effy. This sounds like a good idea. If one season = one academic year then the cast will need to be refreshed every two years, and hopefully this will keep the show from falling into the dismal fate which has befallen previously great shows such as Shameless. We shall see.