Skins

Skins is a British teen drama that follows a group of teenagers in Bristol, South West England, through the two years of sixth form. The controversial plot line explores issues such as dysfunctional families, personality disorders, eating disorders, mental illness, homosexuality, and death. The show was created by father and son television writers Bryan Elsley and Jamie Brittain for Company Pictures, and premiered on E4 on 25 January 2007.
The show is notable for its casting of amateur actors and young writers. The cast are entirely replaced every two series, when the characters leave sixth form. Skins has broadcast four series, and has been commissioned up to a sixth. A Skins film is also in production, as well as an American adaptation by MTV, set in Baltimore, Maryland.
On 29 July 2010, it was announced that the new cast – dubbed the "third generation" – would be unveiled on 5 August.

Writing
The show's realistic plot lines are often credited to the writing team, who have an average age of 21. The series co-producer Bryan Elsley said, "It's all about the writing. [...] We're about letting our audience feel they are not alone. [...] We're always having people miss [writing] meetings because they've got A-levels or even GCSEs".

Critical reception
The first series received positive reviews, although some critics complained that the series depicts teenagers unrealistically and stereotypically.[26] Others criticised the excessive promotion of the show (specifically in the UK) and having relatively mediocre writing in comparison to other similarly themed shows. Actor Nicholas Hoult defended criticism of the extreme storylines, saying they would not reflect "everyone's teenage life", adding "it is maybe heightened for entertainment but all of it is believable."
Marieke Hardy was extremely admiring of the show, and particularly enjoyed the fact that the show was "beautiful and sad and poignant and perfectly hurtful", while also managing to give impression of being drama that is "edgy, funny and rude". However, she did state that she was unsure whether the show was meant for teenagers or not. Stewart Lee has remarked during an interview on the BBC4 programme Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe that he feels lucky for having been a teenager watching TV for teenagers in the 1970s and not the 2000s as "there was something really comforting for nerds and weirdos about programmes like Children of the Stones and The Changes."[citation needed] He said that watching Skins as a teenager today would make him feel lonelier than he already would have been. However, Brooker himself gave the programme a positive review in his Guardian column "Screen Burn", and specifically stated that "the series had wrong-footed me", comparing his initial expectation of Skins as a shallow show to after he had finished watching the series.
In his book Doctor Who: The Writer's Tale, Russell T Davies and his co-author, Benjamin Cook, discuss Skins at length, with Davies praising the show's innovation in a genre that was fast becoming tired and out of date. They are critical of some elements of the first series, such as the believability of Tony's character, or episode 6 which is described as "Carry On Russia", but give high praise to the second series as a whole, highlighting the death of Sid's dad as a superb moment, and calling the finale "perfect". Davies, creator of the award-winning Queer as Folk, also praised the handling of the show's homosexuality-related storylines, saying that he knew a boy very like Maxxie in the 80s. The Age called it a "refreshing, entertaining and worthy series" and wrote it was "compulsory viewing for parents of teenagers as much as for teens." Similarly, the "Naomily" storyline of Series 3 and 4 proved popular with lesbian viewers; a poll conducted by American gay womens' media website AfterEllen.com ranked Naomi and Emily as the top two fictional lesbian and bisexual characters.