Bryan Elsley is used to getting down with the kids. As co-creator, writer and executive producer of Skins, the potty-mouthed teenage rites of passage drama which returns for its third series next weekend, Elsley has already bridged the age gap. He did, after all, devise Skins with his twenty-something son, Jamie Brittain, who lent more than a whiff of authenticity to the episodes he wrote. First thing on a Monday morning, however, Elsley’s demographic has gone even lower, as he takes precious time out of press duties to look after his year old daughter. Once at work, however, Elsley is happy if understandably cautious about the forthcoming reinvention of a programme which has clearly been a labour of love over the last three years, and which was utterly deserving of its BAFTA Scotland win last year.
“I’m feeling a little bit nervous about it,” Elsley says in a quiet but still detectable Scots burr. “Because we’ve completely changed the cast of the show, that might seem quite strange, but I’m quietly confident. I just hope people like our cast.”
Skins is without doubt the best thing to have happened to British television drama in the last decade. The show’s initial hedonistic splurge of glossily attractive teens whose main interests seemed to be sex, drugs and more sex, soon gave way to a far darker but no less sexy – and funny – dissection of the ambiguous thrill of being young and alive in twenty-first century Britain.
As the first drama to be commissioned by Channel Four’s digital wing, E4, Skins came from nowhere with a cast of youthful unknowns. Only About A Boy’s Nicholas Hoult was familiar pin-up material in a show that took yoof TV further than ever before. The show’s strength was in its writing, which never patronised, and treated both its core audience and its cast like adults.
While one can nevertheless understand Elsley’s minor anxieties in allowing his original cast to move on, in truth, such a move isn’t that different from the way Grange Hill used to operate. As pupils graduated from Phil Redmond’s genre-busting comprehensive, so a younger set enrolled for a similar round of classroom capers. It’s a comparison Elsley is clearly flattered by.
“Grange Hill is one of the programmes we’re thinking about when we write Skins,” he says. “Just to say as well, that E4 have been incredibly supportive of our decision. At the meeting where we presented it, you could see a few glances round the room, but at the same time they sort of understood where we were coming from.”
Given that Skins was such a success, is there not more pressure now to perform at a similar level?
“Well,” says a philosophical Elsley, “when you over-perform, that’s the kind of pressure you can manage.”
Born in 1961, Elsley grew up in Eskbank, to the west of Dalkeith in Midlothian. Before he became a writer, director and producer, he was initially attracted to performing, and became involved with Theatre Workshop, which, in the 1970s and 1980s, was a thriving hub of grass-roots theatrical activity.
“There were a couple of really inspirational teachers there,” Elsley remembers. “They gave me the confidence and the imagination to be able to go out and do workshops with young people. That was the great thing about the 1970s, in that it bridged the gap between writing, acting and directing in such a way that you felt like you could do them all. It was a very fertile time.”
From here, Elsley went to York University, where, inbetween studying English and History, he hooked up with a fellow student to form a comic double act called Dusty and Dick. The duo later performed a sell-out show at Theatre Workshop, but disbanded soon after. Elsley’s comedy partner, one Harry Enfield by name, went on to help define TV character comedy in the 1980s and 1990s. The working relationship would later reconvene on Skins, where Enfield played Nicholas Hoult’s highly-strung father, and would also direct an episode.
On his return to Scotland, Elsley became a Scottish Arts Council supported trainee theatre director, going on to work with Wildcat, 7:84, The Traverse and Borderline during a period when populist forms were being explored within a more formal theatrical context. Elsley went on to become artistic director of Pocket Theatre in Cumbria for three years. Pocket Theatre was styled in much the same way as the companies Elsley had cut his theatrical teeth on, in that it was a small-scale, hands-on affair, with much time spent in the back of a cramped van.
Much of Elsley’s early theatrical experience clearly feeds into Skins. As he observes, “When I go to work every morning, I’m executive producing the show. I could be writing, editing or organising with the costume designer what people are going to wear. I relate all those different things with the old days in theatre, when your day on tour would start with digging the van out of the mud. It’s still about putting on a show.”
Aesthetically too, a near Brechtian spirit filters through the programme. This is done with occasional but never overplayed nods to the camera, as well as having the entire cast, including a character who had just been run over, sing Cat Stevens’ Wild World as some kind of Season One finale. Beyond the adolescent lead roles, there was also some knowingly arch casting of the grown-ups. As well as Enfield, the likes of Neil Morrissey, Bill Bailey, Arabella Weir, Morwenna Banks, John Thomson and Josie Lawrence were there. In terms of Scottish connections, Peter Capaldi’s turn as Sid’s explosive father is all but up-staged in one episode when Maurice Roeves turns up on his doorstep as his father, with kid brother Mike Nardone in tow.
While such techniques are hardly The Cheviot, The Stag, and The Black, Black Oil, they nevertheless break up a still prevailing naturalistic conceit in much the same way as small-scale theatre troupes were exploring thirty years ago.
“There’s nothing you can’t include in TV drama,” Elsley says, recognising the parallel. “As long as you make it believable. And if you make it believable, then there really is nothing you can’t do. There are things in Series Three of Skins which you won’t expect, and you hopefully won’t see coming. They’re things that will run completely contrary to audience expectations of what Skins is about, and that’s what we see our job as being about, about challenging audiences and surprising them.”
In terms of engaging with its audience, Skins is the most successful TV drama to date to utilise the internet into its working practices. This includes online-only mini episodes, fan forums and behind-the-scenes exclusives.
“We like to feel that the fans have a really close relationship with the show,” is how Elsely sees it. “Even though they can sometimes be really cruel with their comments. But for 16, 17 and 18 year olds who watch Skins, it’s really important they have a close relationship, not just with the show, but with the people who make it. We want them to feel that the show belongs to them.”
Since the end of Series Two of Skins, most of the original cast seem to be lying low. The day we’re talking, however, is the morning after Trainspotting director Danny Boyle’s film about an Indian Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? Winner, Slumdog Millionaire, scooped Best Picture award at the Golden Globes. Taking the lead role is Dev Patel, who played horny hedonist Anwar in Skins. Tellingly, it was Boyle’s daughter, a fan of the programme, who first suggested Patel for his big-screen debut. Since then, Patel himself has been nominated for a fistful of awards, and has already won Most Promising Newcomer, Best Breakthrough Performer and Best Young Performer. This may be vindication for Elsley and Skins, but what happens next?
“We would like it to run a little while longer yet. I would love to see another cast change-over. If we have three, then I’d feel we’d really achieved something. In the mean-time, I’d like to think that what we were doing was still cool, but then, things can change so fast. That’s just the nature of TV drama.”
Beyond Skins, Elsley is happy to confirm as he prepares to go back on child-care duty that he’s working on “Nothing. This has been my life sixteen hours a day for the last three years. I just about have time to look after my baby girl, and that’s it.”
Series 3 of Skins appears on E4 on January 22nd at 10pm
The Herald, January 24th 2009
ends
“I’m feeling a little bit nervous about it,” Elsley says in a quiet but still detectable Scots burr. “Because we’ve completely changed the cast of the show, that might seem quite strange, but I’m quietly confident. I just hope people like our cast.”
Skins is without doubt the best thing to have happened to British television drama in the last decade. The show’s initial hedonistic splurge of glossily attractive teens whose main interests seemed to be sex, drugs and more sex, soon gave way to a far darker but no less sexy – and funny – dissection of the ambiguous thrill of being young and alive in twenty-first century Britain.
As the first drama to be commissioned by Channel Four’s digital wing, E4, Skins came from nowhere with a cast of youthful unknowns. Only About A Boy’s Nicholas Hoult was familiar pin-up material in a show that took yoof TV further than ever before. The show’s strength was in its writing, which never patronised, and treated both its core audience and its cast like adults.
While one can nevertheless understand Elsley’s minor anxieties in allowing his original cast to move on, in truth, such a move isn’t that different from the way Grange Hill used to operate. As pupils graduated from Phil Redmond’s genre-busting comprehensive, so a younger set enrolled for a similar round of classroom capers. It’s a comparison Elsley is clearly flattered by.
“Grange Hill is one of the programmes we’re thinking about when we write Skins,” he says. “Just to say as well, that E4 have been incredibly supportive of our decision. At the meeting where we presented it, you could see a few glances round the room, but at the same time they sort of understood where we were coming from.”
Given that Skins was such a success, is there not more pressure now to perform at a similar level?
“Well,” says a philosophical Elsley, “when you over-perform, that’s the kind of pressure you can manage.”
Born in 1961, Elsley grew up in Eskbank, to the west of Dalkeith in Midlothian. Before he became a writer, director and producer, he was initially attracted to performing, and became involved with Theatre Workshop, which, in the 1970s and 1980s, was a thriving hub of grass-roots theatrical activity.
“There were a couple of really inspirational teachers there,” Elsley remembers. “They gave me the confidence and the imagination to be able to go out and do workshops with young people. That was the great thing about the 1970s, in that it bridged the gap between writing, acting and directing in such a way that you felt like you could do them all. It was a very fertile time.”
From here, Elsley went to York University, where, inbetween studying English and History, he hooked up with a fellow student to form a comic double act called Dusty and Dick. The duo later performed a sell-out show at Theatre Workshop, but disbanded soon after. Elsley’s comedy partner, one Harry Enfield by name, went on to help define TV character comedy in the 1980s and 1990s. The working relationship would later reconvene on Skins, where Enfield played Nicholas Hoult’s highly-strung father, and would also direct an episode.
On his return to Scotland, Elsley became a Scottish Arts Council supported trainee theatre director, going on to work with Wildcat, 7:84, The Traverse and Borderline during a period when populist forms were being explored within a more formal theatrical context. Elsley went on to become artistic director of Pocket Theatre in Cumbria for three years. Pocket Theatre was styled in much the same way as the companies Elsley had cut his theatrical teeth on, in that it was a small-scale, hands-on affair, with much time spent in the back of a cramped van.
Much of Elsley’s early theatrical experience clearly feeds into Skins. As he observes, “When I go to work every morning, I’m executive producing the show. I could be writing, editing or organising with the costume designer what people are going to wear. I relate all those different things with the old days in theatre, when your day on tour would start with digging the van out of the mud. It’s still about putting on a show.”
Aesthetically too, a near Brechtian spirit filters through the programme. This is done with occasional but never overplayed nods to the camera, as well as having the entire cast, including a character who had just been run over, sing Cat Stevens’ Wild World as some kind of Season One finale. Beyond the adolescent lead roles, there was also some knowingly arch casting of the grown-ups. As well as Enfield, the likes of Neil Morrissey, Bill Bailey, Arabella Weir, Morwenna Banks, John Thomson and Josie Lawrence were there. In terms of Scottish connections, Peter Capaldi’s turn as Sid’s explosive father is all but up-staged in one episode when Maurice Roeves turns up on his doorstep as his father, with kid brother Mike Nardone in tow.
While such techniques are hardly The Cheviot, The Stag, and The Black, Black Oil, they nevertheless break up a still prevailing naturalistic conceit in much the same way as small-scale theatre troupes were exploring thirty years ago.
“There’s nothing you can’t include in TV drama,” Elsley says, recognising the parallel. “As long as you make it believable. And if you make it believable, then there really is nothing you can’t do. There are things in Series Three of Skins which you won’t expect, and you hopefully won’t see coming. They’re things that will run completely contrary to audience expectations of what Skins is about, and that’s what we see our job as being about, about challenging audiences and surprising them.”
In terms of engaging with its audience, Skins is the most successful TV drama to date to utilise the internet into its working practices. This includes online-only mini episodes, fan forums and behind-the-scenes exclusives.
“We like to feel that the fans have a really close relationship with the show,” is how Elsely sees it. “Even though they can sometimes be really cruel with their comments. But for 16, 17 and 18 year olds who watch Skins, it’s really important they have a close relationship, not just with the show, but with the people who make it. We want them to feel that the show belongs to them.”
Since the end of Series Two of Skins, most of the original cast seem to be lying low. The day we’re talking, however, is the morning after Trainspotting director Danny Boyle’s film about an Indian Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? Winner, Slumdog Millionaire, scooped Best Picture award at the Golden Globes. Taking the lead role is Dev Patel, who played horny hedonist Anwar in Skins. Tellingly, it was Boyle’s daughter, a fan of the programme, who first suggested Patel for his big-screen debut. Since then, Patel himself has been nominated for a fistful of awards, and has already won Most Promising Newcomer, Best Breakthrough Performer and Best Young Performer. This may be vindication for Elsley and Skins, but what happens next?
“We would like it to run a little while longer yet. I would love to see another cast change-over. If we have three, then I’d feel we’d really achieved something. In the mean-time, I’d like to think that what we were doing was still cool, but then, things can change so fast. That’s just the nature of TV drama.”
Beyond Skins, Elsley is happy to confirm as he prepares to go back on child-care duty that he’s working on “Nothing. This has been my life sixteen hours a day for the last three years. I just about have time to look after my baby girl, and that’s it.”
Series 3 of Skins appears on E4 on January 22nd at 10pm
The Herald, January 24th 2009
ends
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