Skins · Season 1 · Episode 1 · 25 January 2007
S1E1 Tony
THE MOMENT Tony's orchestration of a multi-person cover story in real time - the scene that establishes his social intelligence and its cost, which is the character's whole arc compressed into a single sequence.
Skins' 2007 E4 premiere introduces the Roundview College sixth form through Tony Stonem's first morning - a character established in the first five minutes as someone whose charisma and manipulation are so fused that distinguishing them is the show's ongoing project. The premiere is formally confident in its commitment to the specific texture of Bristol teenage life: the sex, the...
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Skins' premiere is one of the most formally accomplished debuts in British teen drama: it arrives knowing exactly what register it is working in and executing it with the confidence of writers who are close to the experience they're depicting. Tony Stonem as a first episode protagonist is a gamble - a character whose magnetism and manipulation are inseparable is a harder sympathy establishment than most shows attempt. The Bristol setting is rendered with enough specificity that it feels local rather than generic, and the ensemble (Cassie's vulnerability, Sid's haplessness, Michelle's accommodation of Tony) is established in the pilot with sufficient character depth to sustain the series' subsequent season-by-season reinvention. At 95% RT for the series as a whole, the premiere established a show that generated multiple American adaptations and remains the benchmark for British teen ensemble drama.