Tuesday 29 July 2008

Teenagers Today don’t know they’re Born



See This:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dzM77PS8H8&feature=related

And This:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=he1rYR_8T4s


Reviewgasm (With Apologies to Laura Barton)

The Chatham County Line: IV

This is the sort of album that quite simply makes you need a cup of tea. You imagine being chased through a post apocalyptic world by a carpet monster with harmonica eyes, you try to scream but all that comes out is an episode of ‘Woman’s Hour,’ from 1995. Your cat will love it!

Thanks to Pete and Robbie for their ‘Reviewgasms’ last time out. Read them on the comments board & leave your own one if you want.




Main Event: Teenagers Today don’t know they’re Born

Do you remember how shit youth TV used to be?

When I was a teenager the choice was stark. You had overly earnest American crap or painfully moral home grown teachings. Obviously you had to watch something while you weren’t outside playing sports, so you were left with a modern day Sophie’s Choice.

The American stuff was awful - unfailingly po-faced and serious with zero sense of humour about itself. Plus, to vent a personal grievance, I had a tiny bit of trouble relating to Dawson: a teenage boy that spent three series refusing to have sex with Katie Holmes. Every time some ‘Lifehouse’ track kicked in and the little prick wandered down to the creek to think ‘Deep thoughts and stuff, y’know,’ I would scream at the TV.

“Sod your parents’ divorce mate! Think about what else you could be doing now. Borrow a pair of balls from Pacey* and go do your duty! Muppet!”

I hope I never meet James Van Der Beak because I might just slap him involuntarily.**

Bad as it was, it was a million times better than the home grown stuff. If you’ve blocked it out let me refresh your memory, there was Grange Hill - a government sponsored alternative universe where kids called each other toerags and one drag on a cigarette or being within a mile of someone taking ‘the drugs’ would instantly render you a wall clawing addict; Byker Grove – more of the same but somehow less tolerable due to the Geordie accents; As if - which appealed exclusively to turn of the century coffee shop ‘Justins’ who owned a ‘DJ Shadow’ CD and therefore viewed themselves as only slightly less important than God; and of course the immortal Hollyoaks, which was, and remains, nothing more than a daily half hour Topshop advert. The former two felt like they were written by your dad, the latter two by a ‘cool drama teacher’ called Nathan, none were any good at all.***

And so it remained until a couple of years ago and the debut of ‘Skins.’

For those of you still hardwired by your childhood into thinking that anything featuring teenagers and misadventures is intrinsically bad, allow me to blow your mind. Skins is fucking fantastic!

Shut up, it is!

If you’re sceptical I understand, when I saw the trailer for the first series (which is basically an advert for drugs) my twat sensors started flaring up too, I may have shouted something like ‘get a job, hippie!’ at the screen.

Then, begrudgingly, I found myself watching it. The first few episodes of series one are pretty fun, entertaining fare, the only difference between it and a normal teen drama being the quality of the jokes, the budget and the sheer amount of (consequence free) drug taking. I was mildly entertained but not instantly hooked. However, like all good series, Skins doesn’t blow its wad early on, it has the confidence in its characters and stories to hold something back, to not properly reveal itself.

Then something funny happens. About three episodes in you start to realise that you actually care about these characters, it suddenly dawns on you that they’re not just variations on the traditional slut, jock, freak, nerd, cheerleader archetypes, they’re proper people. My favourites are Chris and Cassie but an argument could be made for all of them, there’s simply no weak link.

Then, when you’re good and hooked, Skins starts to fuck with you a bit; weird little stylistic devices start creeping in, odd things happen that aren’t properly explained by the end of the episode and your opinion of one character - who’s probably been your favourite up till now - is slowly and subtly turned on its head until you fucking hate him. Then the show kicks you in the balls good and proper with a final three episodes that would be more at home in a series of ‘Twin Peaks,’ one of which was easily my TV highlight of 2007.

The second series is even better, it filters out some of the naff aspects of series 1 (there are a fair few) and concentrates on delivering a story that’s dark, strange and emotionally affecting in a way that all the Dawson and Joey bullshit could only dream of. It’s undoubtedly the best teen drama ever made****.

If you haven’t seen it, take your face out of the guardian for five minutes and give it a go. It’ll make you wish you were a teenager again (even more than you already do) whilst simultaneously making you jealous of a generation of kids who actually have something worth watching.

Take note BBC, the bar has been raised. When the laziest development department in TV inevitably pitches ‘Holby High’ you should tread carefully, you’re not going to get away with another ‘Grange Hill’.



*It’s a sad indictment of a town’s gene pool when Joshua Jackson is the Alpha Male.

** The one oasis of occasional quality was Heartbreak High but it couldn’t hold its own against the deluge of shit.

***And give him a poke in the eye for ‘Rules of Attraction.’

****I say teen drama, but if viewing figures are to be believed most of the audience are over 25.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I hated being a teenager .. it was only marginally better than being a kid .. All that confusion, elitism, funny bodily fluids and the creeping suspicion that everyone you know is having a way more fun and forfilling time than you. Teenagers look funny too. somehow half-formed.. ?

I'm not really sure where I'm going with this now.. I guess somthing like: the history of the teenager and teenage culture only really started in 1950 or so however it seemed to me that by the time I became a teenager the weight of responsiblity to 'have a good time ..all the fucking time' was just to much and many people of my age group never seem to have quite got over that and are now leading confused (and often confusing) adult lives that are fostered out of a sense of having somehow failed in whatever the test of teenagnessness was ?!?! personally I find that the older I get the happier I am :-)

Also all the most respected/sucessful depictions of teenagerism (including skins) fail in one major way.. the characters achive a certain level of cool by exuding a level of self-unconsciousness. however the reality of teenagerism is that teenagers are painfully aware of themselfs and (perhaps maybe on some level) the weight of teenage history. In many ways the awkward actining and terrible dialog of Grange Hill etc may (unwittingly) be a far more acurate portait of teenage life than anything in the content of Skins .. I would point you towards this .. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWcpkNbIJZg

oh and by the way.. you think it was bad for those of you who had sport to distract you from the ineptitude of Teen programing? spare a moment for those of us who's only contact with a football was running away from one whilest crossing the park. !!!!

oh dear .. I really haven't thought any of this through at all ..

Matthew Thomas said...

Yeeees but pure realism isn't what people generally crave from entertainment. If it was Mike Leigh would be the world's most sucessful filmmaker.

Like almost all successful drama Skins sells teenagers - and people who wish they still were - a fantasy. The skins cast are enough like them that they can identify with them, but without all the things they dislike about themselves ie bad skin, crippling embarrassment on a daily basis etc. If kids want to see that stuff all they have to do is walk into the sixth form common room.

Essentially it's escapism. When you're a teenager you need as much of that as possible.

Anonymous said...

hehe ..

good points ..

Like I said .. haven't really thought it through ..

Pete Grant said...

Never seen skins so can't really comment, although isn't the kid from 'About a Boy' in it? Not sure why that is totally relevant, but if ever there was an awkward teenager in the making, it was him.. but like i say, never seen it, so he's probably painfully 'cool' now and no doubt(far more painfully) cooler than me...

i would love to go back to being 18again knowing what i know now..

Anonymous said...

Read this, stuck 'Skins' on my Lovefilm list...

...Got disc 1, series 1; watched it; see what you mean. I'd seen the first episode on telly and wasn't that taken, but as you say it goes interesting places very quickly. It's one of the few things I've seen about which I thought, "I wish I'd written that" - the balance of cynicism, nihilism and hope; hedonism and running away from a personal hell; cool and failing to make it. You're bang on with what you say about its function as fantasy - even now, older and supposedly wiser, a part of me absolutely aspires to that kinda messy, devil-may-care in-group debauch. I've had moments of such a scene, but never really committed! ;)

Matthew Thomas said...

Glad to spread the love, J.

Wait till you see the final few - very weird!

The real fun is to be had in series 2 though, so keep the faith.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, Skins is shit. You mention Grange Hill and Byker Grove coming across as though they were written by your dad - Skins IS written by a dad; a father/son combo, in fact, which struck me as being rather tokenistic*. Speaking of tokenistic, have you noticed how all the characters tick all the 'right' boxes? Black kid? Check. Asian kid? Check. Anorexic kid? Check. Geeky kid? Yep, he's in there, too. The joker? Damn right. This could be levelled at a number of shows, but what really pisses me off is the fact that these characters are little more than their denomination. Just once I would love to see, for example, a homosexual character who just happens to be gay, and does not serve as his/her definig quality. It's lazy writing.

Another problem I have with it is that it strikes me as the teen-drama equivalent of a Richard Curtis film: full of quirky, vacuous, middle-class fuck-wits I'd quite happily bludgeon to death in their sleep. Actually, I think that's doing Mr Curtis a disservice: these people are grade-A cunts, with no redeeming features. However, I do agree that Chris and Cassie were the most appealling, as they could act. Actually, I'm not sure I'll commit myself to that statement just yet - a part of me suspects that may be a default statement, as the remaining cast members were so bad... especially Rat Boy. I found myself yearning for some of the more bland cast members of Hollyoaks (not in a sexual way). Can you honestly tell me that you could be friends with these people? I thank *insert deity of choice here* that I don't know anyone comparable to these arseholes (although Cassie did remind me of someone we both know to a rather terrifying degree *shudder*). I think the most polite response I could muster in their presence would be to point and laugh.

Skins is easily personified by the character Posh Kenneth, who frequently adopts a 'gangsta' accent, and that's about all he does - crass, superficial, and quite, quite embarrassing.

(* The Topshop allegation could easily be thrown at Skins, too)

Fuck, I hate this show!