Don't believe the hype

I’ve never known Channel Four to promote a show as much as they have with their new venture ‘Skins’. I for one don’t think the show merits the hype, in fact I think it’s bloody awful. I really had expected more from the makers of the sublime ‘Shameless’, a show that also heavily relies on the talent of the younger members of the cast. None of the young actors in ‘Skins’ came close to performing as well as the kids of ‘Shameless’. To be fair the lad that plays little Liam has more charisma and screen presence then anyone in ‘Skins’. As a whole there was nothing substantial to it. If you took away the drugs, the nudity, the swearing and the trendy soundtrack it would leave you with very little.

Caitlin Moran, television columnist for the Times, wrote last weekend that lead character Tony (Nicholas Hoult) is “the best working class hero we’ve had in years”. I very nearly threw up the moment I read those words. From what I’ve seen so far there is nothing remotely working class about him. I find his smirking face so amazingly annoying I feel like ripping my eyeballs out of my head and flushing them down the toilet just so I wouldn’t have to see him ever again. It seems I’m very much alone on this one as every female featured in ‘Skins’ wants Tony to nail them. One scene in the first episode had what seemed to be an entire girl school lusting over him, not one of them bothered by his bowl head haircut and Dr Spock eyebrows. What the hell? For me it didn’t reflect the life of the average teenager in Britain, well not my teenage years anyway. If you made a T.V. show about my social life aged seventeen it wouldn’t last ten episodes. In fact about five minutes would cover everything. The opening scene would be me walking into an off license asking for four cans of lager. The shopkeeper would ask me for some I.D. I’d tell him I didn’t have any then he would say he can’t serve me. Role end credits…I’m probably just jealous.

Away from the television I’ve been spending my time watching the mighty Youtube. It is an amazing gift from the heavens! With it I’ve been able to find so many clips of long forgotten programmes of my youth; programmes like the influential early nineties Channel 4 sketch show ‘Absolutely’. The show starred Morwenna Banks and John Sparkes (Better known in Wales as Barry Welsh) it played a big part in reinventing the sketch show as a medium. Nostalgia has a habit in making you remember things being a lot better than they actually were so I approached the clips with caution. I’m glad to say that it had me in stitches; a lot of ‘Absolutely’ has aged well. Without Youtube I doubt I would have had the opportunity to review the show. In a time where Channel 4 will screen hours of people sleeping and talking crap on ‘Big Brother’ it’s a mystery that they choose not to repeat ‘Absolutely’. If you visit the fan site you’ll see there’s definitely an audience for it. There’s also an online campaign to get a DVD release for he show.

I suppose when it comes to hype, the underated 'Absolutely' sits on the opportunity end of the scale to 'Skins'. Here's a clip from the show. Hope you like it.