Britainology 42: Skins
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For this month's second Britainology, Milo makes Nate watch season 1, episode 1 of the Channel 4 teen comedy/drama 'Skins.' Nicholas Hoult is in demon twink mode causing chaos all around flip-phone-era Bristol c. 2007, and Nate marvels at the fact that a show like this would have been much harder to make for network TV in the US back in those days. Hope you enjoy!
Comments (10)
I'm Swedish but I was an exchange student in America when I was 16 and THE most difficult culture shock for me HANDS DOWN was HOW little freedom American kids have. I wasn't even a party kid! I wasn't cool! I didn't start drinking until I was 19, I didn't lose my virginity until I was 23 I wasn't TRYING to go to parties I JUST wanted to be able to move around. Hop on a bus, hop on a subway, go to a mall or McDonald's. I was used to being allowed to go pretty much where I wanted from age 11 or 12. I couldn't stay out all night of course but if I felt like going into the city and milling about after school I could. If I wanted to go hang out in the woods by myself I could. Take a late night walk around the neighborhood It's not even like my American host parents were super strict. They weren't. It just wasn't something you do there. It's not even possible in many cases. Some places even have curfews where it's illegal for kids to be outside after a certain time or truancy offices chasing people down if they skip school and that's supposed to be normal. That's not something I'd ever heard of outside America.
Nicholas Hoult is very funny because he's a very attrative guy, he's got a nice face with beautiful blue eyes but his face really looks EXACTLY like he did when he was a little boy. He looks like you put a Marcus from About A Boy-filter on a bigger body. Same with Thomas Brodie-Sangster (kid from Love Actually). They're both running head-to-head in the competition of World's Tallest Baby.
Captain hindsight here but Britainology 42 should have been Douglas Adams
hell yes
Ginger hair with frosted tips I think would mean you just look like the the boy from My Parents are Aliens. Also, nothing quite says 2007 like straw hats, skinny white ties, skinny jeans, converses, and checkered shirts.
mainly remembering this show for having the ultra good Grime/Dubstep soundtrack. wonder if Riley had opinions on that OST
I mainly just remember The Gossip's "Standing the of Control" on all the ads for it. Very much a vibe in of itself. Ties very nearly with landfill Indie bands of the time. Everyone kept bloody singing that song at my school.
My mom would tell me not to smoke weed, "because it's illegal and getting caught could mess up your life," but given that I know I wasn't as sneaky as I thought I was at the time, i think it was the "getting caught" that was the real message
I watched Skins when I was like 21 or 22 so fresh off being a teenager. I grew up in the SF Bay Area and even tho there’s a lot of difference being young in big cities can give you so much freedom. Idk if I want my kid doing the same shit I did as a teen, but aye teens are feral. I was lol. Also depending on culture the lap thing can be a big deal. Not with my fam (we mixed and all not religious) but if my lady did that in front of her traditional Latin mom it’d be some issues
Harry and Paul is an interesting one. It's a quite good, very trad sketch show long into the period in which sketch was a bit on the back foot (though the Mitchell and Webb Look was an exception, but then both of them still had Peep Show running concurrently); it's quite edgy and of-the-time dodgy in places, but there's also a bit of a nasty spiteful edge to some of it that marks it out as being a bit more than a jocular bouncy comedy show, especially compared to his earlier sketch shows. A lot of them are silly or surreal otherwise, but you get the impression that the characters live in quite an unpleasant, cynical world.