BRISTOL TO BALTIMORE

Spotlight

Every generation comes across adolescence as if it were a new drug or a disease—and the previous generation comes up with a TV series to play dealer or doctor. In the U.K., that position is held by the teen drama Skins. Set in the medium-size, tough-ish city of Bristol, the show features a large ensemble cast of pulchritudinous pups, whose overlapping story lines contain just enough sex, drugs, and foul language to keep it edgy. Too embarrassing to watch with parents, it hits the spot for those too young to be doing this stuff for real. And now it's changing its location and accent for an American version, which begins this month on MTV, (highly) dramatizing the lives of a new teenage crew in the mediumsize, rather tougher city of Baltimore. In this new series, true to the blueprint, there is barely an "issue" that doesn't get its own sympathetic story line, from mental illness to teen homosexuality. And if you find the emotional tenor too relentlessly hysterical and the characters too risibly self-absorbed, then that's probably because you're well past its sell-by date.

A. A. GILL

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