One More Skins

Skins was perfect timing for me. The early seasons especially—I was the right age, old enough to feel the darkness, young enough to think it understood me. The later seasons fell apart, and don’t get me started on the American version, but those first two generations stuck around in my head in a way most TV doesn’t.

So when E4 announced they were making Skins 7, I felt this weird mix of things. Excited? Skeptical? I didn’t know if I actually wanted this or just liked the idea of it.

It’s three one-hour episodes, each focused on a different character from the original run. Hannah Murray is Cassie, now in London trying to make sense of questions nobody can answer. Jack O’Connell is Cook, working as a drug courier, falling in love, drowning in the violence he’s been running from. Kaya Scodelario is Effy, sleeping with her boss, accelerating toward a collision she doesn’t see coming. Naomi and Emily show up too. Elsley and Brittain wrote it.

I want to see these people again, want to know where they ended up. But Skins was already done. It had an ending. There’s something haunting about returning to a story you thought was finished, something you can’t quite shake even if the new episodes are perfect. Spring 2013 they air, three episodes, and that’s supposedly it for real. We’ll find out if going back feels better than just letting it stay gone.