"it looked like Hollyoaks getting off with Trainspotting on the set of Christina Aguilera's Dirrty video"

So said Charlie Brooker on his first impression of Skins way back when the singularly debauched trailer for series one burst forth onto our screens, taking up whole adbreaks with depictions of a house party, the like of which I hadn't seen since the advent of Facebook. The rise and rise of Facebook and the sudden decline in free-for-all house parties is directly linked; news of a parentless house would previously have only spread so far via word of mouth, but these days thousands turn up, cause massive collatoral damage, and get a gleeful Daily Mail in full yoof-damning mode involved. 2007 seems like a simpler time in comparison; Skins was new and exciting, an event, featuring at least one familiar face - 'oh my God, it's About A Boy but all growed up and attractive in a clown-like way!' - and the buzz surrounding the first series was immense. The sheer scale of anticipation showed, more than anything else, how little television there was that was either aimed at teens, or that purported to show them as they are. Aside from the interminably boring OC and Hollyoaks, worlds apart but equally alien to most UK teens' experiences, there was literally nothing for that demographic before Skins stumbled onto our screens in a drunken haze and proceeded to shock middle-England.

Original cast series 1&2

And what made it so schocking exactly? The revelation that teenagers have sex with each other, take drugs, drink and generally behave in an audaciously stupid and dangerous manner most of the time? There is plenty of all of the above in Skins and the argument has been made for all three series that it is gratituous in its portrayal of them. However, logically it wouldn't be a drama without the drama - and it never pretended to be a bastion of high culture, so why expect it to be anything more than a slighty zany and exaggerated view of a dozen or so chlichéd teenagers and their trivial times and trials? That said, I have always felt that for all it's faults, there have been several episodes in each series which were really outstanding pieces of television. The writers Bryan Elslie and Jamie Brittain have formulated some dud episodes between them, but in general the have got their characters very right. Everyone knows a Tony, the arrogant self-assured good-looking one, or a Jal, a brilliant musician who is nonetheless plagued by self-doubt. I'm not sure what this says about teenagers in general - what are we if not clichés I suppose. The character of Cassie played by the beautiful if somewhat rabbity Hannah Murray, may have spawned a thousand pretenders in the real world saying 'wow' in a ditzy way, but her storyline was in fact very well executed. She is frightened of change, uncertain of what she wants or how to get it, things which any teenager could relate to.

The new cast have taken some getting used to, and I personally feel that this series got off to a bad start; the puerile humour increased, and there seemed to be little character development in the first few episodes, which included a particularly cringe-worthy turn from Mackenzie Crook and a frankly perverted Ardal O'Hanlan. This weeks episode completely reversed my opinion however, and I am now hooked once again. It focused entirely on JJ (played by the quite adorable Ollie Barbieri), a nervy autistic boy who can only deal with social interaction by doing magic tricks, who is caught between his feuding friends and completely incapable of dealing with it alone. The question of what it is to be normal was panned out in a creative and unusual way. The scene where he is prescribed more drugs to solve all his problems simply because he is autistic, instead of receiving any real help from the NHS was a sadly accurate reflection of how they treat teenagers - there is a pill for every ill, whether physical or mental.

What made it particularly interesting was that the music was, apart from a live band in a club scene, entirely Debussy. It was a bold device for a show that has knowingly immersed itself in the slightly off-beat indie scene, the frequenters of which have probably never heard of impressionism. That might sound a little condescending but it's probably true to say that most people haven't, unless they play the piano with an obsessive and possibly unhealthy enthusiasm, in which case Debussy is impossible to avoid. Clair de Lune is included in almost every anthology of music, anywhere, ever. Also used in the episode were the Deux Arabesque, and Golliwog's Cake Walk, a brilliant piece I'd forgotten until it appeared while JJ smashed up a psychotherapy unit waiting room, and I immediately sat down to play it after I'd watched the episode. Not entirely sure whether I'm allowed to call it the Golliwog's Cake Walk. I discovered that at a school recital recently, a friend of mine was told she couldn't play it for fear of offending the audience. I thought this was ridiculous over-censorship as this piece was written nearly a century ago and was intended to be a children's piece, but oh well... Bring on the rest of series 3. They've caught me good and proper now.