holyshitskins!

…where E4’s Skins soared, MTV’s Skins crashes.

Unlike the original, which was groundbreaking in its honest depiction of millennial teenage life, MTV’s version seems calculatedly obsessed with the filth factor, pushing that content front and center while failing to realize that the original was so successful because it mined the rich interior lives of the lads and lasses of Bristol for narrative effect.

At once grounded and existing in a Technicolor heightened reality, the U.K. Skins captured the melancholia and often death-defying joy of adolescence. The show tackled such topics as teenage sexuality, rape, suicide, drug abuse, eating disorders, mental illness, and death with a combination of sensitivity and shamelessness.

Here, however, there’s a washed-out quality to everything, a leaden dullness to the plotting (which, ironically, leans way too heavily on the source material, at times beat by beat), and a largely wooden quality to the young actors. The U.S.’ Tony (James Milo Newman) lacks the serial killer charisma of the original’s Tony Stonem (Nicholas Hoult), who held both his best friend and his girlfriend in his thrall, playing with both like a child would dolls. Likewise, the loveably spacey Cassie (Hannah Murray) is transformed here into Cadie (Britne Oldford), an unexpressive mental patient who has a penchant for knives and cheese puffs, while silent Eura (Eleanor Zichy) lacks the instincts and presence of her scene-stealing predecessor Effy (Kaya Scodelario).