Goddamnit, I have to write about Skins.

I blame YouTube for this. Specifically, I blame this video about how messy the third generation was.

And yes, I’m late to that video; I can’t help my YouTube algorithm. But it doesn’t matter anyway; I don’t much care about the third generation. For me, it’s always, always, Gen One.

This is probably because that first series of Skins dropped when I was 16. It’s about a bunch of 16-year-olds. It was basically made for me. Me, all my mates, and most of the TV-watching teen population of Britain at the time, actually. From what I remember, Skins was a smash.

This was a time before streaming services, and DVDs jostled for position with VHS tapes in Virgin Megastore (my god, I’m a fossil), and I have a really strong memory of heading over to my best friend’s house because she’d taped an episode so we could watch together (I was sleeping on another friend’s bedroom floor at the time, so didn’t have TV privileges of my own).

And look, I’m not here to argue it’s the best TV ever made.

Even reviewing the episodes from those two series that made up Gen One (each series represented a year of A Levels, roughly, so each generation only got two series each), there are some utterly ludicrous plotlines. Chris boffing a teacher? Sketch the Stalker? The musical number?!

But. At the time I didn’t notice that much. What I did notice was the heart of the characters, and just how strongly I related to the whole thing.

I mean, I didn’t relate that much to Michelle and Tony, which is probably a shame as they were definitely sold as the “leads”, if the show had such a thing. Their on-again-off-again relationship was a vein through the plot arc, and it was… fine. I mean, Tony was a total jeb-end the whole time, but so was Nathan in Misfits and I adore Nathan from Misfits.

But aside from Tony and Michelle, the rest of the cast had storylines that really got to the heart of who they were. They felt real, like I could truly meet these people. Actually, sometimes I felt like I had met these people — having actual teenagers play the parts helped, and they were dressed in a manner that truly wasn’t out of place in 2007 Britain. Sure, Michelle, Jal and Cassie were obnoxiously pretty, but no more than the 16-year-old girls at my college were obnoxiously pretty (and yes, I was jealous of them, but I’d never have admitted it).

Look — Cassie struggled with a genuine ED, and it was treated sensitively, without judgement, and with full acknowledgement of not only how hard it must have been for her, but what it did to her personality. Sometimes, her ED made her lie to people she cared about. Very often, it made her present a fake version of herself to the world, which came across at times as insufferable, pretentious, Manic-Pixie-ish. But that’s still real.

As for Chris… whew. I’ve seen people say Chris’s storyline was the most unrealistic, and I do get that, what with the teacher-boffing and all, but also… I ran away from home at 16. As mentioned, I was sleeping on a friend’s bedroom floor. One of my closest friends was leaving the care system (at SIXTEEN) and learning to live by herself in a council house. Many of my friend group had disinterested or absent parents, and most of my friends took pills and speed for fun every weekend. So, the idea that Chris’s mum might abandon him with an envelope of cash, leaving him to fritter it away on drug-fuelled parties and pizza, just didn’t seem that wild to me.

[Side note: Josie Long as Chris’s careers advisor was a masterstroke of casting, and may well have partially inspired my own careers-advisor path.]

But even the quieter plots showed heart and realism in a way that’s memorable even now, almost 20 years on.

Lovely Sid, struggling with not being as cool as his best mate while his parents’ marriage implodes. Gorgeous Jal, with her people-pleaser tendencies and perfectionism as a musician even as she battles to win her dad’s approval. Anwar — Anwar! Answering his phone during prayer! What a brilliant visual joke. His friendship with Maxxie was gorgeous, even more so because of the impossible tension between the religion he’s been raised in and his best friend’s gayness.

All of that, crammed into two short series that have stuck with so many people my age for decades. Is it any wonder I describe my upcoming novel as a cross between Skins and Dante’s Inferno? These teenagers were like friends, and their heartbreak was my heartbreak, and that fundamental look at how genuine British teens interact with each other was, I think, pretty groundbreaking.

It’s that same vibe that made me love Misfits as much as I did (minus the sickly love story bollocks), and Crazyhead, and This is England, and a bunch of other shows that might have wild storylines but still feel true, somehow.

As much as I love a medieval-esque high-fantasy, I feel like we need more of this in writing today. Characters that feel true, even thought they’re fiction. It’s what I aim to write, anyway.

So, that’s it. My love for Skins generation one is etched through me like a stick of rock, and it’s TV I’ll always be grateful for. Which means there’s only one appropriate way to end this:

Raise a glass, and fuck it for Chris.