Nichoulas Hoult as Tony Stonem in the UK Skins

 

 

 

 

At the suggestion of a friend, I ended up watching Skins the other night. No, not the lame MTV version, but the unapologetic, vibrant, disgustingly real British series. I simply couldn’t stop watching and got through the whole of season 1 in 1 evening. Much like Secret Diary of a Call Girl, Skins is completely honest, there is very little censorship, and you see a LOT of, pardon mon Francais, tits and ass.

Now, last week was the US premiere of MTV’s re-vamped Skins. I made it through ten minutes. Now, I’m all for artistic license when re-creating anything. My favorite staging of La Traviata has Violetta running around giant tomblike blocks in a graveyard… I get it. But there is something thrilling about the opening scene of the British series, with Tony waking up in his naked couple blanket, to his younger sister Effy coming home in the early morning clad in the previous days school girl uniform, improved slightly by heavy make up, jewelry and wild hair.

Within the first ten minutes of the MTV Skins, the network replaced Tony’s blanket with a spider covered down comforter, made Effy look a hell of a lot like Jenny from Gossip Girl (post her designer phase) and the worst fuck up of all? The popular character Maxxie, a gay male dancer, was now a lesbian cheerleader. OK bravo to Pretty Little Liars for keeping to your theme and introducing Emily as a lesbian within the first season. MTV, shame on you for not embracing the UK’s intention that a young gay male could in fact be one of the guys, part of a popular group of teens. And while we all love Glee’s Kurt, it would have been nice to see a young gay male go through this journey with Tony, Cassie, Michelle, Sid, Anwar, Jal and Chris while NOT having slushies thrown in his face every five seconds, but no, MTV gave us the stereotypical fantasy of a lesbian cheerleader… how fucking lame! We’ll see what happens when MTV runs into season 2’s “Sketch” difficulties. Good Luck and goodbye.