Joe Depsie on The Friday Night Project

Thanks to Skinsonline

Skins Finishes with 750,000 Viewers

SOURCE: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/apr/15/tvratings.television1

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Skins: E4’s drama about a group of sixth form college students in Bristol

Teen drama Skins finished its second run with almost 750,000 viewers on E4 last night, Monday April 14.

The season finale, which featured a mass clearout of the Skins cast, had 741,000 viewers, a 5% multichannel share of the audience in the 10pm hour, according to unofficial overnights.

Skins was watched by another 204,000 when it was shown again an hour later on E4+1.

E4’s drama, about a group of sixth form college students in Bristol, returned in February with 884,000 viewers for the first episode of its second run.

The first half of the final episode lost out to BBC3’s EastEnders repeat, which averaged 877,000 viewers, but beat the same channel’s Gavin and Stacey, which followed the soap at 10.30pm and had 389,000 viewers.

At the same time on Sky One, Night Cops arrested 261,000 viewers while More4’s Grand Designs attracted 263,000.

Earlier, BBC4’s Stephen Fry and the Machine That Made Us, a documentary about the invention of the printing press, had 596,000 viewers, a 3% multichannel share in the 9pm hour.

At the same time on BBC3, Young Mums’ Mansion averaged 521,000 viewers while another showing for ITV1’s new US drama Pushing Daisies on ITV2 had an audience of 393,000.

Skins Cast on The Cafe

Thanks to Skinsonline for the video.

Skins Star in Dr Who

Skins star Joe Dempsie has landed a role in Doctor Who.

The actor, who plays wildchild Chris in the E4 teen drama, will appear as a soldier who sees his comrades murdered by aliens.

However, he admitted that he had never watched the sci-fi hit before taking the part.

He told The Mirror: "I play a misguided soldier. To be honest I’d never seen the show before."

Other guest stars lined up for the fourth series include Alex Kingston, Sarah Lancashire and Felicity Kendal.

Skins on This Morning - lol

Thanks to Unreality TV for the video

Skinsonline have got a few screen caps:

Everyone Else Set to Copy Skins

Alex: I’ve seen some epsiodes of the American version of the office and it’s appauling. If they really are going to produce a US/localised version of Skins then I really don’t think that the US are going to capture the British humour in it at all. Also there will be all of the American Parent Associations who will be up in arms portraying such blant scenes as teens smoking dope and having sex. I dunno I just don’t think it’ll work personally.

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A British TV show depicting teenagers doing drugs and having sex, which arguably has helped to raise the creative bar on Channel 4, is about to be unleashed on the international market.

“Skins,” a cult hit with Blighty’s 16- to 24-year-olds, is a latenight dramedy about the lives of a group of worldly, middle-class 16- and 17-year-olds made by U.K. shingle Company Pictures.

Now in its third season, its ratings have dipped a bit, but local versions have been optioned in Spain to Curazo TV and in Romania to MediaPro Distribution.

There is speculation that U.S. webheads also are considering making a version of “Skins.”

“There has been interest from a couple of U.S. networks to adapt the format,” Channel 4’s acquisitions head Jeff Ford says.

Created by veteran British scriptwriter Brian Elsley and his son James, “Skins” employs a writing team mostly in its early 20s; one episode of the current run is written by an 18-year-old.

The cast is largely made up of faces new to TV. The exception is “About a Boy” star Nicholas Hoult, who plays cool Tony, a budding alpha-male whose confidence is undermined by a car crash.

“One reason why the audience has taken to ‘Skins’ is because it doesn’t preach,” Channel 4’s head of scheduling Rosemary Newell says.

While figures for the second season, which bowed Feb. 11 on spinoff, youth-skewed web E4 (each episode is repeated a few days later on Channel 4), are down year-on-year despite an intense marketing campaign, the show remains one of the channel’s biggest draws, ahead of established E4 fare like “Friends.”

The first season of “Skins” averaged 1.1 million across its nine episodes, a good audience for a U.K. digital channel.

The second run debuted with 884,000 viewers, which translates into a multichannel audience share of 5.9%. For the week beginning March 16, viewers had dropped to 709,000.

” ‘Skins’ success shouldn’t be measured only by ratings,” E4 head Angela Jain insists. “It is an utterly channel-defining show that totally chimes with our audience.”

In any case, Channel 4 claims the figures underestimate the true size of the “Skins” audience because a lot of viewers are watching via the station’s on-demand portal, 4OD.

Undoubtedly the program has won the approval of Brit TV professionals. Earlier this year it won the prize for best drama series at the Broadcast awards. “Skins” is nominated at next month’s TV BAFTAs in the same category.

The company is developing a third season, but with budgets tight and Channel 4 in the midst of deliberations over its long-term strategy, the future of an expensive show like “Skins” — despite its iconic status — is not guaranteed.

Yet with advertisers keen to reach teenagers, it is perhaps not surprising that the skein has been exported to more than 100 territories as a completed show. But can “Skins” translate to overseas auds?

“NBC is planning to make ‘Father Ted’ (a surreal Channel 4 sitcom lampooning the Catholic Church),” Ford says. “If they can do ‘Father Ted,’ I can’t see why ‘Skins’ can’t be reversioned for the U.S.

The question is whether a U.S. version of “Skins” could retain the essence of the U.K. show that makes it unique. ‘The Office’ (which has been adapted successfully for the American market) is edgy, but not in the way ‘Skins’ is.

“There are things in ‘Skins’ like young people having sex and doing drugs that make people feel uncomfortable,” Ford says. “If HBO or Showtime made a version of ‘Skins,’ there wouldn’t be a problem: A (broadcast) network adaptation would need to be watered down.”

SOURCE: http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117983119.html?categoryid=1019&cs=1&nid=2562

To the American Skins Fans

Alex: Hey! I’m just wondering how true this article below is? Do you "get" our British humour? Do you get our references and such? Please comment

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As I was growing up, I spent many summers visiting my grandparents in Nova Scotia. Visiting my mom’s parents was one of the highlights of the summer, as her father had a ridiculously large video collection. One thing that always struck me as peculiar, though, were his television viewing habits: originally from England, he seemed to enjoy all manners of films, but favoured British television shows over American. He always maintained that British television was just better.
This notion always confused me. How could the same Hollywood machine that had churned out excellent films for over 100 years be unable to do the same for television? How could a handful of British television networks (the BBC, ITV and Channel Four) achieve what the American conglomerates could not? Moreover, how was it that the Hollywood engine always seemed to fail whenever they attempted to adapt British shows for American audiences?

Prior to the explosion of cable television in the last decade, most Canadians got their major exposure to British shows via PBS broadcasts from the United States. Shows like Coupling, Men Behaving Badly and The Office have tickled funny-bones around the globe, but attempts to update them for American audiences have largely failed. Men Behaving Badly lasted six years in England and only two in America. The British Coupling lasted for four years, the American version aired four episodes. The American Office only initially received a six-episode order from NBC, in part because of the outright failure of previous British properties in the American market. A re-tooling of the show in the off-season away from the British premise and the rising movie-stardom of actor Steve Carell are credited by industry pundits with saving The Office from closure.

Stranger still, is the success of American versions of hit British quiz shows. The Weakest Link, Whose Line is It Anyway? and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? all became huge hits almost immediately. This is also ignoring the runaway success of American Idol, based upon British hit Pop Idol. Why have British sitcoms done so badly over here, but British game shows done so well? Is the oft-used "America and Britain have different cultures" argument valid? The answer may be a bit more complicated than that.

It goes without saying that the majority of sitcoms produced in a country are written by people from that country, so Friends was written by people that would get the cultural references made in the show. British sitcoms were written by British writers for British audiences, so the cheapest possible approach taken by American networks–take an existing script, change geographical references and hope for the best–was fundamentally flawed because the humour in a show like Friends lay more in the characters than the setting. The American pilot episode of The Office was a shot-for-shot remake of the British curtain-jerker and most of the first-season episodes were straight adaptations of British episodes, albeit slightly watered-down. Only when the writers began to flesh out the characters to differentiate them from their British counterparts did anyone really care about the show. The few successful sitcom adaptations retained the premise of their original but tossed out everything else.

The appeal of adapting British game shows becomes obvious: there are no writers to pay to rewrite episodes for American audiences and the concepts are often fairly idiot-proof. The average episode of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? or American Idol is almost indistinguishable from its British counterpart and works because there’s no cultural gap, perceived or otherwise, stopping audiences from enjoying the show. The complete and utter lack of writing and characters means that, so long as the premise is engaging, nothing can pull the audience away. With this in mind, it’s no small wonder that the biggest foreign influence on American TV has been the game show.

Throughout the entertainment industry, redoing other peoples’ work has a huge appeal, largely because most of the work is already done for you. However, adapting anything without making some consideration of your audience is a recipe for failure, as the various failed adaptations of British programs has proven. When a program, scripted or otherwise, has a strong enough concept, everything else can be cut away and work can be done on creating something lasting.

SOURCE: http://gauntlet.ucalgary.ca/story/12309

Skins Cast at RTSPA

Here’s Picture’s of some of the Skins Cast that were at The Royal Television Society Programme Awards.

Dev Petal, Hannah Murray & Joe Dempsie

Dev Petal, Hannah Murray & Joe Dempsie

Hannah Murray

Hannah Murray

Hannah Murray

Joe Dempsie

Peter Capaldi (Mark Jenkins/Sid’s Dad)

Peter Capaldi (Mark Jenkins/Sid’s Dad)

SOURCE

Mitch Hewer and Joe Dempsie on Lily Allen & Friends

That wasn’t a bad interview…with Joe - what the fuck was up with Mitch? Was he drunk or what? He just played with his hair, and couldn’t sit comfortably for the 5 minutes or whatever they were on. He just looked very uncomfortable the whole time.

Many thanks to Skinsis for the video. The audio isn’t amazing but it’s not too bad either. You can watch it on the Imp for another 4 days at http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/page/item/b009507g.shtml

Also check out over 200 screen-caps done by Owen from Skins-Media

S2E06: Trailers

I think we get the full on sex scene in this episode.