Skins: Series 5, Episode 1

Skins returned last night, with the third generation of sixth formers starting their two years at Bristol’s Roundview College. As ever, it was stylish, dynamic and looked fantastic, featuring a promising set of new characters and a great young cast. In fact, I liked everything pretty much everything about the first episode except for its clichéd and predictable plot, which left me longing for the excitement of its first series and the newer shows E4 has commissioned in its wake.

Highlights: Sat 13th – Fri 19th Mar

Time for a quick update on what’s coming up over the next week. On Sunday night, the feature-length documentary No Distance Left To Run follows Blur as they reunited last summer after a 10-year hiatus, going on a journey that would take them to the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury. That Glastonbury performance can then be seen straight after. The film, by Dylan Southern and Will Lovelace, also takes in the history of one of the most important bands of the 1990s. It should be a nostalgic evening.

Richard Hammond’s Invisible Worlds looks like a very interesting three-part series, looking at things that the human eye can’t see. Things like the different parts of the spectrum, ultraviolet and infrared, that some other animals can see. The first episode looks especially fascinating, using special high-speed cameras to look at things in super-slow motion, to see things that would ordinarily pass us by.

This week also sees the final episode of the fourth series of Skins, which as we saw from last night’s episode, is ending with a huge amount of drama and emotion. This morning it was announced that two more series of Skins have been commissioned by Channel Four, and once again there’ll be an entirely new cast.

The week ends with the bi-annual Sports Relief charity telethon. Celebrities, comedians and sports stars will be doing their bit for a brilliant cause, with some sporting versions of everything from Dragon’s Den to Ashes to Ashes. It’s never quite as entertaining as Comic Relief, but the important thing is to give whatever you can, by clicking here.
Blur – No Distance Left To Run, Sunday 14 March at 10.50pm, BBC Two
Richard Hammond’s Invisible Worlds, Tuesday 16 March at 9pm, BBC One and BBC HD
Skins, Thursday 18 March at 10pm, E4 and E4 HD
Sport Relief, Friday 19 March at 7pm, BBC One

Skins: Series Four preview

Teen drama Skins, the enormously successful hit for Channel Four’s digital channel E4, is back this Thursday night. The series, which prides itself on using a very young writing team, famously made the daring move of almost completely replacing it’s popular original cast after two series. When the new characters, such as twins Emily and Katie and the strident Naomi were first introduced, many viewers were left pining for the likes of Sid, Cassie and Maxxie. But by the end of the third series, we were sucked into the world of these new characters and left wanting more.

#e4kneesup

Last week I was lucky enough to be invited along to E4’s Autumn season launch at an undisclosed top secret London location (the pub). I was slightly baffled as to why they wanted me to come, but excited by the idea of getting a sneaky peek at upcoming shows and rubbing shoulders with people from tellyland.

Now, you might imagine that being in a room full of journalists and PR folk might be a little daunting to an outsider like myself, but fortunately there was a free bar. That helped, a lot, as did the fact that Steve and Nikki from E4 were really nice and welcoming and I met a whole load of friendly, great people, including the awesome Catherine & Gen (we did indeed party hard!) and contrary to the general stereotype of the press, lots of newspaper and magazine journos who were absolutely lovely.

Anyway, you really don’t want to know about all that, you want to know about shows themselves. Read on…