I watch a lot of television, a lot of movies. One of the perks of being more or less self-employed is that I have a lot of spare time on my hands. With that spare time, I tend to immerse myself in the ridiculously vast and equally narrow pop-culture world that surrounds us. I spend more time in front of a TV or with a book in my hands than is likely humanly healthy. Billy Bob Thornton once said, “There’s a lot of losers out there,” and upsettingly, most of them are writing, directing, or acting in the most mind-numbingly irrelevant drivel you can imagine. On that rare occasion though, often when we least suspect it, some form of art will drag us into its world, immerse us in its culture and prosecute our emotions. If we’re luckier still, we’ll finish thrown out, relinquished and charged with a count of awakening.

Skins is one of those shows. It pulls you in like a vacuum, continuously siphoning your emotions throughout, toying with them and at times leaving you unable to even cope. It accomplishes this with a grace and quirkiness that is unrivaled by most anything on television in North America.

Part of its appeal is its cast of complete unknowns. You’ll recognize Dev Patel from this year’s Slumdog Millionaire and after some fumbling of mind you might realize that Nicholas Hoult was in About A Boy with Hugh Grant as well as The Weather Manwith Nicolas Cage, but unless you’re a Brit you’ll likely have no idea who any of the others are and this is a GOOD thing.

I’ve always preferred watching something with newcomers because you’re able to lose yourself in the illusion. They’re not actors playing characters. They’re just characters… and thusly they become real people in your mind. You don’t find yourself thinking about how a shot was done or how the actor did something on set. You buy into the mirage and the work becomes all the more sincere.

The Skins’ Music Supervisor, Alex Hancock, is a master soundtracker. His selections are spot on for every scene. Some of his choices are so perfect that they literally transform an ordinary scene into something spectacular. From Buddy Holly to The Decemberists, Lambchop to Britney Spears, Portishead to MGMT, Asobi Seksu to the Warsaw Village Band… his choices are both eclectic and a sobering reminder of just how crucial music is to a good piece of film. This show’s tunes are so good that I’ve spent almost an entire day in time added up downloading hundreds of songs.

The icing on the Skins cake however is probably the writing. A good writer can lift a decent show or film to masterpiece levels. Bryan Elsley is that kind of writer. Brutally honest, poignant, startling at times, his script is both comedic and heavy. Good lines aren’t enough though and Elsley is clearly aware of this. Plot is just as important as intelligent banter. The story line of Skins’ first two seasons is almost epic in nature. Sweeping and raw, the story takes its characters through enough ups and downs to make a roller coaster seem tame. Intricate and powerful, his words transfer to film in a way I’ve never seen before. His use of seemingly infinite settings, daring to not confine his characters to the same five sets like most shows do, widens the breadth of Skins’ visual appeal. Moreover, his willingness to create abstract scenes that don’t make sense on first grasp but crystalize in clarity upon further reflection is both admirable and enchanting.

There is a scene in Episode 3 of Season 2 where Sid needs his best friend Tony to comfort him. A simple setting could well have worked, but Elsley decided to put them in a crowded club and with Hancock’s choosing of Crystal Castles electronic music overriding all other sound, what could have been a plain scene became a powerful and dramatic affair that laid tremendous emphasis on the emotion of the moment.

I was moved by the veracity of this show’s characters, their complex and messy relationships, their gains and losses, how you can’t help but fall in love with them, even the ones you hate. There is an over the top quality to how their story unfolds and yet, the realism of it all is almost impossibly ardent. It’s been a while since I connected with fictional characters like I did with those in Skins; an even longer time since a work of film brought tears to my eyes. There is truly something magical about this show.

For the third season, the entire main cast was dropped in favour of a new ensemble, a pattern that will repeat itself every two seasons according to the studio. I can’t say that I’m a fan of this, but in a way, it’s nice to have two beautifully moving seasons wrapped up as a package, all strings tied up, instead of a drawn out saga that could lose its touch. The story as is won’t be watered down, won’t lose its raw edge, and won’t drag on. It will remain a small and worthy piece of work that can be admired for its tightly woven 19 episodes.

The best line of the whole show was Chris’, “Fuck it.” Not a ‘give up and quit’kind of “fuck it”, but an ‘I’ll give it a go/what have I got to lose’ kind of “fuck it” – an ‘always say yes/take a chance/accept a dare/prove yourself wrong/tackle it head on/push yourself/you can do it’ kind of “fuck it”. If you listen for it, you’ll hear him and the others say it all the time. And if I can say so myself, it’s fucking brilliant- a smashing good message…

… and one that this show lives up to. It’s daring, risqué and forward in a way that more shows should take notice of. Pushing the envelope in film isn’t about shock and awe, it’s about presenting an alternate reality that is so SHOCKINGLY close to the real world that it can’t help but leave you in AWE. If you haven’t seen Skins yet, you’re missing out.