So I took a weekish break from constant posting, and I figured I should explain why. So on Netflix I was recommended to watch Skins, a British TV show that looked pretty interesting, so I figured I would try it out. I rented the first disk of season 1 and really liked it. As soon as I finished the first disk, I checked around if the local Video rental stores had the second DVD. Sadly none of the close ones did.
I turned to my alternate source: SideReel. I quickly found out that shows were significantly better online because most of the awesome music was cut from the DVD due to high licensing costs. If you wanna check out the awesome music from the show and trailers and such click here. It was interesting because the show starred a bunch of relatively unknown actors.
Nicholas Hoult plays Tony, a cute guy who's a bit cocky but lovable, sort of the glue in the group. He's dating Michelle, played by April Pearson. She's kind of a crazy partier who has the looks and self esteem to do anything she wishes. Tony's best friend, Sid (played by Mike Bailey) is the odd-ball. He hasn't really done anything with girls, doesn't have anything near Tony's looks, and is hopelessly in love with Michelle. Effy (Kaya Scodelario) is Tony's younger sister. She's less a part of the group, but leads her own crazy life and bridges the first and second generations of the show (more on that later).
Maxxie (yes spelled with two X's in his name is played by Mitch Hewer. He's cute, blonde, and gay :D (what more could you want in a TV show). He's a fun guy, and best friends with Anwar, the only actor on the show I recognized. Most of you probably know Anwar; played by Dev Patel, a star in Slumdog Millionaire. He's a British Muslim, from a religious family, without a pick-and-choose attitude towards his religion.
The group rounds itself out with three more characters: Chris, Cassie, and Jal. Chris (Joseph Dempsie) is a sex maniac who has a thing for flirting with his teacher Angie (Siwan Morris). Cassie (Hannah Murray) is an anorexic girl whom plays with drugs and is fairly unstable. Jal (Larissa Wilson) is a brilliant clarinet player who is under-valued by her family.
The cast was hilarious during the first and second season. I really enjoyed how each episode focused on developing one character further. In the first season, we got to know them. In the second season we watched them deal with all their problems. It is amazing how such an unknown cast (only one big hit) could do so well and create such an amazing series. It's also sad that none of them were able to continue to great careers afterwords. It's also interesting to note that most of them were similar ages to the characters on the show. Some where two years older (Chris), but most were in fact the correct ages.
You might notice that I've brought up terms like first and second generation, or people being good in the first two seasons. This is because the producers, or creators, or writers, or network or someone (I don't know who specifically) did the unthinkable: killed the entire (practically) cast after two seasons. They cut all the actors from the main group except for Effie who would bridge the gap between season 2 and 3 (she was the younger sister so she would be one of the main actors in season 3). Effie's parents who were occasional guests would remain her parents throughout season 3 and 4.
This change does seem better than doing what they did with The O.C., where they continued an entire season after all the characters had graduated from high school. In that season, half the characters were supposed to be in college, and the writers kept instigating crazy problems in order to bring the characters back together. Unfortunately though, they risk the chance of not succeeding as well with the second generation. I can't attest that the second cast is inferior to the original, but I definitely didn't click as well with the second generation as I did with the first. This may however have been because I was comparing them to the first generation who I had really grown attached to, and not because they were actually a bad cast (I'm sure the fact that the first generation had a cute gay boy and the second didn't have one was a large factor in my decision). Also, the second generation just seemed younger then the first generation.
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