Skins is a double BAFTA- winning teen drama that follows a group of teenagers in Bristol, South West England as they grow up. The show was created by father and son television writers Bryan Elsley and Jamie Brittain for company pictures, and premiered on E4 on 25th January 2007. The first two series featured an ensemble cast led by Nicholas Hoult's character Tony Stonem. This cast was entirely replaced for the third series, excepting Tony's sister Effy and Effy's friend Pandora. Filming for series four with the second generation of characters started started in July 2009.
Media Representation- Series 3 introduces the second generation of the cast main characters. Enigmatic and elusive, Effy is attractive to all around her, utterly in control of herself and totally independent. Effy is the younger sister of Tony Stonem, one of the characters from the first two seasons of the series. In comparison to her initial mute personality of the first series, she has proven to be quite adventurous, open-minded and promiscuous. Pandora has found a best friend in Effy, and a sweet tooth for naughtiness. She is up for anything due to her naïve nature, which at times leads her getting into trouble. James Cook (Cook, Cookie) is an impulsive, sociopathic17 year old. He loves to have a good time and is constantly the life and soul of any party. Cook shows a great interest in the ladies, and all his partying can sometimes get out of hand, leading him into trouble. He loves to drink and use drugs, but whether or not he is an addict is left ambiguous to the viewers. Freddie is skating his way through life, but on the way he is getting stopped by his best friends JJ and Cook. JJ is portrayed to have child-like excitement and loves magic and suffers from Asperger syndrome.Naomi is represented to be an ideal ist. Passionate, political and principled, she's the only one who still believes in anything. However like most typical issues of teenagers, she is unsure of her sexual orientation. There is no direct association of a character to a certain representation in relation to one being the hero, villain, donor, etc. Each character has its own central episode where the characters rotate in representation to the requirement of the storyline. For example, in series 3 episode 4, JJ is the central character who is represented as the main protagonist and Emily is represented as the helper.
Genre- Each episode of series 3 and the previous series has universally presented these teenagers stereotypically to an excessive degree. It could be criticised that each episode's extreme storyline announces the assumption that they depict everyone's teenage life. However it could be argued that though the story lines have been heightened for entertainment, they are also believable as the drama manages to give the impression of it being edgy, funny and rude, making it realistic through the sense of comedy.
Institution- The production company for Skins is Company pictures. Company Pictures is an independent British television production company which has produced drama programming for many broadcasters. these include: drama series Wild at heart (2006-date) for ITV1, the comedy drama Shameless (2004-date) for Channel 4 and also the comedy drama The Invisibles for the BBC.
Audience- Though the series is written and acted by teenagers it is highly debatable weather the right audience for this series are teenagers as the teen comedy drama is shown after the watershed when its target audience of under-18s are likely to be in bed rather than permitted to watch the f-word-laden comedy. Its prominent audience range between 16-24, however, the excessive "pill-popping" and "bed-hopping" visual in each episode of the series make it arguably targeted at the higher end of the age range. Statistically the start of the third series drew in 877,000 and 113,900 including E4+1, which did well with its key audience demographic of younger viewers (56.2% were aged between 16 and 34).
Articles on the broadcasting of Skins...RESEARCH...
'Skins' looks, sounds and smells like teen spirit
"If you haven't heard of Skins, it is probably because you don't watch E4, or because you don't belong to its target audience of young people - or possibly a bit of both. But the series, which centres on a group of pill-popping, bed-hopping teens in Bristol, will soon be much harder to miss: this week it makes the jump to a weekly slot on Channel Four.
When the first series of the show originally aired earlier this year, it made the kind of impact on 16- to 24-year-olds that marketing men dream of. It all started with an eye-catching trailer, featuring a house party full of young things dancing drunk to the Gossip's Standing in the Way of Control.
This may sound like a programme that has relied on irresponsible shock tactics to hook viewers - the news reports in April that a girl had destroyed her parents' house after a Skins-themed party got out of control helped to perpetuate that view. But Skins is something more than that. It is funny, cheeky, and its characters are charming. Who could fail to love Cassie, the beautiful, spaced-out anorexic with a crush on the group geek, Sid? (...)
Today, at the filming of a 10-minute Skins special that is showing exclusively on MySpace - the 300 or so extras in the church hall were picked through the programme's page on the site, which has 62,000 "friends" - it is clear just how much the country's teenagers have fallen for the show."
The review from telegraph gives tasteful insights of the series. The article firstly opens positively about the new show (article dates back to 2007) influencing its readers that it "will soon be much harder to miss". Further on it compliments the acting and writing of the series as well as presents some surprising statistics which show the generating hype of the new TV series. Even more, the article gives the readers some shocking stories on how viewers of Skins have been "hooked" to the series and what actions it has tempted them to do.
Skins: the wild bunch
"Boasting and exaggeration apart, teenagers have always got up to much more than parents know about and, mostly, ignorance is bliss. It prevents us being either shocked or consumed by envy. But, for the past year, there has been no excuse for innocence, not since Skins was broadcast - a series with the unique claim to authenticity of being written, and acted, by teenagers.
The opening shot set an eyebrow-raising tone: it showed a teenage boy in bed with a naked man and woman - his bedmates were only printed on his duvet cover, but it took a while for that realisation to dawn. From then on, through nine episodes, this bunch of middle-class Year 12s at a Bristol sixth-form college could be seen masturbating, trashing houses, throwing up (either because of drink or eating disorders), having it off with teachers, and getting into revenge dramas with drug dealers."
A second article from the same institution gives a different insight to the series, this time summing up the series in a few words and giving the impression of it being a shallow show. However it again gives praise to the uniqueness of the series as it is written and acted by sixth-form teenagers.
Bibliography
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skins_%28TV_series
Sites usedhttp://www.google.com/
The new series of teen drama Skins kicked off on E4 bringing 665,000 viewers to the Channel 4 digital channel last night, Thursday 22 January.
An almost entirely new cast has been hired for the third series of Skins, which attracted a 4% multichannel share between 10pm and 11pm, according to unofficial overnights.
The audience for the youth drama was slightly down on the 741,000 who watched the final episode of the second series in April last year.
Skins was beaten in the slot by BBC3, whose repeat of EastEnders gathered 786,000 viewers in the half hour from 10pm.
Multichannel competition in the 10pm slot included the UK premier of the fifth series of US drama import Grey's Anatomy on Living, which attracted 407,000 viewers.
In the 9pm hour, Abby Lockhart's departure from ER brought 558,000 viewers to More4.
BBC1 dominated ratings for most of the evening on the five main terrestrial networks, with crime drama Hustle attracting 5.6 million viewers and a 23% share in the 9pm hour. Hustle was up by 200,000 viewers from last week, with the same share.
BBC2's factual programme Victorian Farm came second in the 9pm time slot, adding an extra 200,000 viewers and a share point since last Thursday, to land 3.5 million viewers and a 15% share, beating Total Emergency on ITV1.
Victorian Farm, about a family trying to live on a farm with 19th century technology, has steadily gained momentum throughout the series, adding 600,000 since the first week.
Last night's episode of ITV1's Total Emergency, with police out in force at a football derby, drew 3.4 million and 14% share for ITV1 in the hour from 9pm.
The penultimate night of this year's underwhelming Celebrity Big Brother had 2.7 million and an 11% share for Channel 4 in the hour from 9pm, with another 247,000 watching an hour later on Channel 4 +1.
BBC1 retained its ratings crown for the rest of the evening, with BBC News taking a 25% share with 5.1 million viewers at 10pm, Question Time reaching 2.4 million and 19% at 10.35pm, then This Week managing 1 million and 15% share at 11.35pm.
ITV1'S News at Ten recorded an audience of 2.2 million, an 11% share at 10pm, while Channel 4 News reached 1 million and 5% share in the 55 minutes from 7pm. Another 24,000 watched Channel 4 News at 8pm on Channel 4 +1.
The second episode of the Princess Diana series What Really Happened, this time focusing on Dodi al-Fayed, reached 1.5 million viewers and an 8% share on Channel 4 at 10pm. Another 104,000 watched an hour later on Channel 4 +1.
Earlier in the evening, Emmerdale clinched the 7pm half-hour slot for ITV1 with 7 million and a 33% share, beating The One Show on BBC1 with 5.3 million and a 25% share.
Then in the half hour from 7.30pm, EastEnders reached 8.8 million and a 40% share for BBC1, beating The Krypton Factor with 3.3 million and a 15% share on ITV1.
On BBC2, a repeat of Oz and James Drink to Britain reached 1 million and a 5% share in the half hour from 7pm, followed by Fast Bucks: How Porsche Made Billions with 1.7 million and an 8% share at 7.30pm.
The Bill won the 8pm time slot for ITV1, averaging 4.9 million viewers and 21% share for the hour, beating BBC1's sitcom hour. The Life of Riley at 8pm on BBC1 had 4.1 million viewers and Green Green Grass at 8.30pm attracted 3.9 million.
An audience of 3.7 million tuned into Masterchef, a 15% share for BBC2 for the hour from 8pm, while over on Channel 4 The True Cost of Cheap Food, a Dispatches programme featuring food critic Jay Rayner, reached 3.1 million and 13% share in the same time slot. An extra 287,000 tuned in on Channel 4 +1.
Cowboy Builders scored an audience of 1.5 million and a 6% share for Channel Five in the hour from 8pm, followed by a repeat of the Kevin Costner western Wyatt Earp, which had 900,000 viewers and 6% share from 9pm to 12.45am.
