Skins Deep

MTV 's new series Skins is more tame than it looks
By Maxine Shen, New York Post

Don't be fooled by the undressing -- the American version of Skins isn't as shocking as it makes out to be. Based on the highly controversial, scripted UK series and tagged with a "mature" rating -- usually reserved for shows like Nip/Tuck and the soft porn on Cinemax -- the upcoming MTV series seems to have dialed back the raunch factor promised in its promos.

Yes, the teens in the series are obsessed with sex, popping pills and smoking spliffs, but its edginess is on par with an average episode of Gossip Girl -- what with its threesomes, drug deals and near-rape scenes.


"When 'Skins' first launched in the UK [in 2007] it gave British TV viewers shocks when they thought they couldn't be shocked anymore," says Colin Robertson, TV editor of the The Sun newspaper in London.

The original series, created by Bryan Elsley and his then-19-year-old son Jamie Brittain, took on dysfunctional families, sexual orientation, death, substance abuse, destructive house parties and sex.

People barely out of their teens wrote and consulted on the show -- spawning dialogue and scenarios that teens could actually relate to -- and the cast was stocked with teens who always seemed to be undressing.

"It was the first British series to actually show teenagers getting up to what a lot of teenagers actually get up to -- sex, drugs, swearing and disrespecting adults," says the Sun's deputy TV editor, Leigh Holmwood. "It wasn't sanitized, it was full-on swearing. You saw everything. Teenagers loved it when it first came out, but there was a lot of disquiet at the time from a lot of other people about whether this was damaging or should even be shown."

Interestingly, the MTVseries has turned the UK series' gay character, a dance-loving guy named Maxxie, into a lesbian cheerleader named Tea. While it could easily be a simple creative decision -- Elsley and Brittain are also execs on the MTV version -- it's worth noting that kissing lesbians are far more common on TV here than gay men make-outs.

"In the UK series, you did get the feeling that they wanted to be as provocative as possible and as shocking as possible," Holmwood says. "So I don't know whether MTV wants to tone it down or whether they want all this controversy."

Other changes include the elimination of full-frontal nudity (verboten in the US, but not that uncommon in the UK) and bleeping obscenities.

"Of course it's a big risk for MTV to try and emulate that shock factor for US audiences, who seem too often to be treated with kid gloves by the big networks," Robertson says. "But it's perhaps a bigger risk to tone it down too much. Teenagers will turn it off if it's too tame and flip onto YouTube where their friends' sex and drugs videos could well prove more realistic."