America, why can’t we have nice things? I caught a glimpse of MTV’s pedestrian attempt at adopting one of my favorite teen dramas, Skins, which was originally a British television show. My first problem with it, is the teenage hedonism of the American version feels more forced than in the original. The shameless decadence and rampant drug use in the British version feels more like a simple reality of teenage life than any sort of act of rebellion; halfway into an episode, you forget that they’re smoking weed and popping MDMA pills in practically every other scene.

Also, there’s still the matter of what we can and can’t get away with on television in America. While there isn’t any frontal nudity on either show, the British Skins does (fairly often) depict sexual acts (I watched an episode the other day where Effy, my favorite character, is having sex in a closet). “Fuck”, “shit” and every other obscenity you can think of run rampant in the original and while “shit” has become more prominent on cable television during primetime hours, MTV’s Skins is still beholden to America’s prudish censorship.

I’ll tune in because my curiosity all too often gets the better of me, but for anyone that’s never seen Skins, just do yourself a favor and Netflix the original.

I’m in the various stages of finishing four different documentaries. One is about body image in Liverpool, which I’m making with my Swansea Love Story co-director Leo Leigh. The others are about interracial swinging in Florida, training with the Parachute Regiment for Afghanistan and another about living with teenage celebrity obsessives. I’m also planning to go to Somalia next month to live with pirates. This explains why I haven’t been posting on here as much as I should have been.