Posts Tagged ‘Skins’

TV on DVD: “Skins, Volume 2″

skins-vol-21Skins, Volume 2 (2009, BBC Video)
purchase from Amazon: DVD

Skins, the British teenage drama that airs in the states on BBC America, is the best teen series to come to television since My So Called Life went off the air in 1995. Funny, poignant, and at time heartbreaking, Skins explores the social activities and the emotional rollercoaster of being a teenager in the 21st Century with such devastating accuracy that nothing else on television compares to it. BBC Video has just released Skins Volume 2, compiling the entire second season of the show. The second season wraps up the stories of the group of friends attending Roundview Sixth Form College we met in Season 1 and is essential viewing for anyone who is a fan of Skins — and anyone who just likes quality television.

Skins season 2 picks up six months after the cliffhanger season one. Tony, the cocky, brash young man who is the lynch pin to the group of friends in the show, is a shell of his former self. In final moments of that finale, he was struck by a bus and his fate was left unknown. We soon learn that he survived the tragic accident, but spent in a coma (the “Lost Weeks” supplemental videos on disc 3 detail what happened to the other characters while Tony was in the hospital). As the season begins, Tony is slowly regaining his memory and how to use his limbs and other body parts. Tony is portrayed by Nicholas Hoult, who came into prominence as the boy in About A Boy. Hoult shows exceptional range as an actor charting all of Tony’s pain, frustrations, fears and emotional triumphs over the course of the entire second season’s 10 episodes. Equally effective are Mike Bailey as Sid, Tony’s oldest and most enduring friend and April Pearson as Michelle, the girl Tony loves. Both Sid and Michelle were devastated by the accident. In fact, Michelle was he was on the phone with Tony when he was hit by the bus. Moments after uttering that he loved her, the bus barreled into him. While Sid sat bedside and visited Tony everyday, Michelle was nowhere in sight, too overcome with grief to be there. However, now that Tony is recovering at home, Sid doesn’t know how to act around him and Michelle has decided that sleeping around is a good cure for her pain. All of these storylines are resolved by the end of episode 10, but not before feelings are betrayed and friendships nearly severed. (more…)

DVD Review: “Degrassi: The Next Generation — Season 7″

degrassiDegrassi: The Next Generation — Season 7 (2009, Echo Bridge Home Entertainment)
purchase this DVD collection from Amazon: DVD

Degrassi: The Next Generation is like the older, Canadian cousin of the BBC’s Skins. Skins is brasher and quite a bit more racy, but that doesn’t mean that Degrassi: The Next Generation is some old fuddy duddy. Quite the contrary, using a half hour format (perfect for today’s attention deficit teenagers) and a much quicker pace, Degrassi: The Next Generation tackles the same issues as Skins with just as much drama, humor and effectiveness (with none of the nudity or foul language)

Echo Bridge Home Entertainment has just released the complete seventh Season of Degrassi: The Next Generation in a four-disc box set. If you are as unfamiliar with Degrassi as I was, starting your journey into the Degrassi universe with the seventh season is a little disorienting, like suddenly attending a new high school mid-way through the school year. However, a few clicks of the mouse are an easy remedy to that problem. Season 7 was significant because many of the regulars from the show (who had been on it all seven seasons) were finally graduating from high school (mind you, the actors playing these roles were actual teenagers and not twentysomethings trying to pass as teens). Particularly long-running was Emma (Miriam McDonald), whose origin dates back to the 1987 series, Degrassi Junior High, and whose character was the catalyst for Degrassi: The Next Generation.

The history of these characters may seem complicated, but once you’re immersed in this world, you quickly catch on. Which is good, because Degrassi has a cast so large I could spend most of this review rattling off their names and how they all interconnect. Instead, I’ll highlight several of the compelling story arcs that carried through season 7: (more…)

DVD Review: “Skins Volume 1″

Anyone who reads my Three Strikes Rule column is aware of how much I love the BBC’s much-hyped drama Skins.  Funny, heartbreaking and painfully accurate, Skins is as much a series about coping with life as it is about being a teenager. It is not the type of show that would get made in the U.S., at least, not without getting watered down by standards. The closest thing the networks have to Skins is Gossip Girl, yet the comparisons stop with the description of a show about wild teenagers.  Whereas the CW’s popular series details the life of upper-class New York preppies, Skins focuses on middle class kids in London.  The English kids don’t waltz into any bar they want; they don’t go shopping to cure their woes.  Instead these blue collar students struggle to get by in a world that doesn’t take them seriously, even though the crap they’re dealing with is serious.

If you’ve seen the episodes broadcast on BBC America and you think you’ve seen it all, think again.  Skins Volume 1 collects every episode from Season One on three DVDs in their original, unedited form.  Since England doesn’t seem to have a problem with language, the depiction of teenage debauchery and, in a couple cases, full frontal nudity, the viewers overseas get to watch Skins as was originally intended by the show’s producers.  What’s more, the picture quality on this DVD set is, like, a hundred times better than what you see on BBC America.  Shot in hi-def, the video is crisp and vivid.  I don’t know why it is, but whenever I watch something on BBC America, the video looks like it’s second generation 16 mm film that’s been trampled over by a football crowd, thrown in a dusty canister and stored in the network’s basement until they decide to air it one or two years later for American audiences.  Someone really should look into why the picture quality on that network is so crappy.

I digress. (more…)

The Three Strike Rule: “90210″ and “Skins”

If you’re like me, you checked out the CW’s reboot of 90210 for nostalgia’s sake. I mean — Jennie Garth, come on! Even my wife thinks she looks good. Well, Jennie Garth’s hotness is about the only thing this show has going for it. I’ll admit, I was curious to see how producers Gabe Sachs & Jeff Judah would transform the show from its Aaron Spelling sudsy roots. After all, these two worked on NBC’s exceptional series, Freaks and Geeks. Unfortunately, none of the charm and humor from Freaks and Geeks exists in 90210. In fact, there is nothing to differentiate 90210 from Gossip Girl, except that Gossip Girl is a little better written.

The setup for the new 90210 is similar to the original series, which ran in the 90’s on FOX: Annie Wilson (Shenae Grimes) and her adopted brother, Dixon (Tristan Wilds) are the new kids at West Beverly Hills High School. They’ve just moved to California from Kansas so that their parents (Robe Estes and Lori Loughlin) can keep an eye on grandma Tabitha (Jessica Walter, rehashing what she did on Arrested Development). For Annie and Dixon, the awkwardness of being the new kids is made worse by the fact that their dad has taken a job as the principal. Annie and Dixon have a close sibling relationship, which they’ll need to help them cope with all the new cliques and classmates, including the spoiled, rich, Naomi (Anna Lynne McCord); Ethan (Dustin Milligan), a popular jock who crushes on Annie; Navid (Michael Steger), who heads up the school’s TMZ-type newscast; and Silver (Jessica Stroup), the rebel, who also happens to be the younger sister of one Kelly Taylor, played by Garth, reprising her role from the original series.

You still have a bunch of rich kids moping through life, worried about their lives, and spending shitloads of cash. And we’re supposed to care about them why? What’s worse, every “teenage” girl on this show looks like she has borderline health problems. I haven’t seen this many stick figures since Ally McBeal and Lara Flynn Boyle of The Practice went off the air. When you consider that the camera adds weight, I am saddened and sickened by how malnourished the actresses look. Except, that is, for Jennie Garth, who actually looks like a thirty-something mother. Good for her for not starving herself now that she’s back on prime time television.

Sadly, (and I’ve said this before) American television series about middle-class people struggling to make ends meet do not garner the ratings networks desire, no matter how great the show. Freaks and Geeks was shuffled around in the NBC lineup, and it eventually went out with a whimper. Friday Night Lights, one of the finest shows on television — I would say the best family drama airing — has a loyal audience, but NBC has not been able to get the ratings it wants. This year, FNL will air on Direct TV’s 101 in the fall and return to NBC come wintertime. This arrangement was done to offset the supposed expensive costs of producing the show. Any show that seems to find some success has to have a high concept to succeed. (more…)