TCA ’09: BBC America Slips Into New 'Skins'
Series, Featuring New Cast, Brings Bad Behavior To College
By Linda Haugsted -- Multichannel News, 1/10/2009 8:01:00 AM
Complete MCN TCA Coverage
Los Angeles—Fans of the controversial BBC America teen drama Skins will find the latest season featuring a totally new cast.
Producer Chris Clough, speaking at the network’s panel session at the Television Critics Association winter press tour here Saturday, said the focus of the show is 16- to 18-year-old British teens, so the original cast “aged out” of the series. This season, the “class of 2009” head to a city college where they race one another to break all the behavioral bans of the college: no drugs, no alcohol, no sex.
Asked if the series has attracted criticism for its depiction of bad behavior, Clough said the activities depicted “are what’s happening” among that age group in England, and the producers don’t judge the morals. After the debut of the first season, real teens had a raucous party they’d advertised as a Skins party, but the creator said teens always have outrageous parties -- they just happened to name this one after his show.
Ironically, cast members Luke Pasqualino and Lily Loveless told the assembled TV critics that they were early fans of such wholesome fare as Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Sister, Sister.
The next season will debut this spring.
Another salacious series, Mistresses, is set for a Feb. 28 debut. The drama tells the story of four friends that have infidelity in common. One, a doctor, is having an affair with a patient; another is a 9/11 widow who finds out her husband has another family; a third is trying to have a baby, to the detriment of her love life; and the fourth is a commitment-phobe with lots of lovers.
Asked it they are trying to make a point about infidelity, co-creator SJ Clarkson said the point is “it can happen to anyone.” The show has been structured around a group of women because “friendship is the new family.".
“This is not about promiscuity,” added Douglas Rae, executive producer, but about the honesty women have between each other. The actresses added, that when they were cast they were told there wouldn’t be any nudity beyond “side arse.” The channel said there is very little editing for sexual content for the U.S. from the UK version.
The channel will also bring Americans a sequel to the popular series Life on Mars. In the original series, detective chief inspector Gene Hunt was mysteriously transported back to the 1970s. In the sequel, detective inspector Alex Drake finds herself transported back to 1981, the year of the royal wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana, the Brixton riots, where she will work with Hunt in that era.
Music, which is a major undercurrent in the show, will reflect the 1980s New Romantic trend.
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