Baring All That It Can

Skins Will Arrive Soon on MTV, Baring All That It Can
By Dave Itzkoff, New York Times

In a downstairs recording studio in the West Village, Bryan Elsley, a co-creator of the British teenage comedy-drama Skins, was guiding James Newman, a star of the MTV remake of the show, through a typical line of dialogue.

Conjuring up his confidence, Mr. Newman, a handsome, baby-faced 18-year-old who plays Tony, the cocky ringleader of a high school clique, said to an unseen co-star, “Normal girls like it.”

Mr. Elsley offered his thoughts on the line reading: “If you could be slightly scandalized,” he said, “but also amused.”

In an interview afterward, a more demure Mr. Newman declined to specify what indiscreet act he was trying to talk another (undoubtedly female) character into during that scene. “You’ll see,” he said with a grin.


MTV and its viewers will also soon see what an Americanized version of Skins looks like when the series has its premiere on Jan. 17. Famous in its original incarnation for frank depictions of sex, substance abuse and other authentic teenage pursuits, Skins is a show that MTV sought specifically for its boundary-pushing content while knowing that it could not break as many rules on American television.

As the United States debut approaches, the network and the Skins creative team realize that whether this version is too risqué or too tame, or even if it gets its balance just right, there will be consequences to pay.

“When you do things the fans don’t like, they really turn on you,” Mr. Elsley said. “When characters die in the show, there’s trouble. When people have the wrong sexuality or sexual behavior, there’s trouble. And when you bring the show to America, there’s trouble.”

Mr. Elsley, 49, a Scottish-born television producer with a gentle voice and sleepy eyes, recalled in an interview how he and his son Jamie Brittain created Skins about five years ago out of “a slightly irritable conversation across the dinner table.”

“He was acquainting me with my age,” Mr. Elsley said of Mr. Brittain (he uses his mother’s last name), then 19, “and my boringness and the mundaneness of what I did.”

Drawing from Mr. Brittain’s pop cultural interests (and his desire to make a teenage drama that would “be actually good and not rubbish”), the father and son created a group of characters based on Mr. Brittain and his friends: the well-liked, devious Tony; the hard-partying Chris; the fumbling, virginal Sid.

“Jamie wouldn’t mind you knowing that he is, in fact, Sid,” Mr. Elsley said, “and he would take great pleasure in telling you that his ridiculous, shout-y Scottish dad is in fact me.”

The only limitation placed on the original Skins, broadcast in Britain and Ireland on the E4 channel, was the prohibition of two particular swear words. The series took full advantage of this freedom, depicting its characters in various sexual couplings and triplings, struggling with unrequited crushes, eating disorders and unwanted pregnancies, and even dying.

Now on the verge of its fifth season (produced by a 24-year-old Mr. Brittain), Skins caught the eye of MTV executives as it started appearing on Netflix and BBC America.

“It was letting go of its assumptions about what young people do and how they talk, and letting them do it for themselves,” said Stephen Friedman, the general manager of MTV.

Skins also appealed to MTV as a signature series that could help the network reinvent itself as it pursued a millennial-age, 18-to-24-year-old audience and added more scripted series to its portfolio. Though documentary-style shows like Jersey Shore and Teen Mom are still far and away MTV’s most popular programs, the proliferation of the reality format across television has made it “hard to feel pioneering in reality,” Mr. Friedman said.

Scripted shows, he added, “became another opportunity to represent the life and the rhythm of our audience, in the way great fiction can be disconnected to your life but still speak central truths to you.”

But striking the deal that brought Skins to MTV took more than a year. Mr. Elsley said he spoke to several “amazing, legendary” show runners in the United States, only to conclude that he would have to produce the series himself.