After months of anticipation, MTV’s U.S. version of Skins premiered Monday night. There was a lot of buzz surrounding the network’s redoing of the British cult favorite, which follows the lives of teenagers in a world of lots of sex and lots of partying — the show even ended up a trending topic on Twitter. Fans were afraid MTV censorship would dilute the show’s original charm and I’m not shocked to say that it kind of did.
The plot of the pilot almost exactly follows the plot of the first episode of series one of the British version, although there are some slight and not so slight changes. Characters Tony, Michelle and Chris survived the import. But Sid is now Stanley, Effie is now Eura, Anwar is now Abbud, Cassie is Cadie and Jal is now Daisy. Oh, and Maxxie, the beloved gay character from the UK version, is now a lesbian named Tea. Wonder how all those fans on Twitter are taking that.
The episode’s lackluster déjà vu makes pointing out nuance similarities and differences the most exciting part. It opens with the same scene of Tony blasting his sound system to distract his parents while his sister Eura sneak in from a night out. But this time, instead of looking like a mysterious, crazy party girl, Eura just looks like a dirty version of Avril Lavigne. Daisy is playing a trumpet instead of a clarinet. Chris is still a party animal bent on hooking up. But most significant of all, Tony’s bed comforter no longer features the image of two nude human bodies. The image of two nude bodies on plain white sheets communicated to me when I first watched the show of how simple and physical sex seems to be, but story lines and the characters challenged this idea and proved that sex is not always just sex. The bed spread used to be symbolic of the show’s unapologetic dialogue on sexuality, but now American audiences just get spiders. Yes. Spiders. These are small, hollow changes that do nothing to differentiate Skins from the original version or enhance the story line most people are already familiar with.
There were some things the American version seemed to do a bit better than the UK version. First of all, the cinematography was really beautiful at times. There are definitely some scenes I can see being capped and becoming Tumblr famous through reblogs. Eura’s sneaking in, Stanley and Cadie jumping on the trampoline and the group smoking together in the bathroom stall — these were some shots that were incredibly artistic.
Although reactions to Maxxie’s recasting were largely negative, how Abbud and Tea’s relationship plays out will be interesting to see. The UK version featured a lot of tension between Maxxie and Anwar as Anwar’s Muslim beliefs drove a wedge in their platonic bromance, but Abbud’s unrequited feelings for Tea are an addition with potential.
The new gay-dynamic and cinematography are all the U.S. version seems to have going for itself, at least for the pilot. MTV tells audiences that their version will eventually deviate from the plots that drove the UK version, so audiences will just have to wait and see.
The more the U.S. version tried to compare to the UK version the more it kept on reinforcing why the original is so much better to watch. MTV had to use censors and block out cussing, making sure to tip-toe around images of sex and leaving dialogue inconvincible, while British Skins kept their characters believable and gritty with explicit visuals and harsh language. The U.S. version embarrassed itself with simply serving carbon-copies of already established characters, whether or not all members of the audience were familiar with, while the UK version prided itself when it first premiered with relatable, yet original characters.
It seems like MTV put a large effort into the show, but by the 40 minute mark I was pretty much done with the episode. With such a strong cult following of a show like Skins, it’s difficult to re-do. MTV tried way too hard to make the pilot like the UK version, but most audience members have already seen scenes like the ones they saw the other night. If MTV had gone about creating new story lines with the same characters, they could have had a more possible shot at success. But now they’re just left with a revamped pilot that probably deferred more viewers than it hooked.