Skins [US] | TV Review

Story by Mitch McCann 

| Published Feb 1, 2011

The Parents Television Council has long been a pillar for the protection of a child’s right to remain untainted by rogue television banditos, who seek to plague your offspring with mindless vulgarity, sex, and drug abuse. The PTC made headlines recently when they issued a statement about the upcoming release (yes, it hadn’t even been televised yet) of MTV’s version of the cult UK show ‘Skins,’ calling it “the most dangerous program that has ever been foisted on your children.”

No one told the PTC however, that when an organization, even one nobody’s ever heard of, tells people to not do something, they do it. The only reason anyone ever saw ‘The Golden Compass’ is that the Vatican said it’d make Jesus cry.

Part of what sold the UK version was the mumbled, dry British humor that American television has grown so accustomed to stealing. Instead, it sits on basic cable with glaring cuts to avoid exposing the largely under-aged cast, combined with cheesy bleeps, entirely sucking you out of what little momentum it had.

To its credit, the show doesn’t fail outright, but the ‘Skins’ retooling has been dumbed down for American audiences, something the pseudo-fans of the original resent, and is readily apparent to everyone else. The show now serves mostly as fodder for gripers still bitter over the canceling of BBC’s Office and the subsequent longevity of its American counterpart.

While the first episode was a near shot-for-shot remake of its British forefather, the producers made it clear they will no longer cling to previous scripts in an attempt to forge its own path. Along with its cable constraints, ‘Skins’ isn’t shaking up anything, pushing anyone’s envelope, or broadening horizons - and for any incarnation of ‘Skins’ that’s a bitter sentiment - but compared to everything else on MTV, ‘Skins’ has got it in spades. It may not become a national hit, but it’s as good as anyone could have expected.