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Harry Enfield on Skins - Radio Times, February 2008 |
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Harry Enfield talks to Benjamin Cook about starring in - and directing - edgy teen drama Skins.
"Teen telly would never be the
same again. Last January,
E4's first home-grown
drama set a new blueprint
for adolescent TV, with its bold, racy
portrayal of the lives of a group of
16- to 18-year-old friends.
In that first series, comedian Harry
Enfield played the dad of central
character Tony (About a Boy's
Nicholas Hoult). This time, as well as
appearing again in front of the
cameras, he's making his TV directing
debut - and he's fully behind the series.
"I don't really watch much telly,"
confesses Enfield, "but Skins is just
brilliant. I loved the first series and
was asked to direct two episodes
for the second. Whether they ask me
to do anything else ever again
remains to be seen."
Enfield first met Bryan Elsley,
Skins' co-creator and writer of this
week's episode (and the only member
of the writing team over 30), when
they were students at York University
in the early 1980s. "Bryan doesn't
like to just use 'normal' directors on
Skins, so he thought it'd be fun to
try me."
Did Enfield's standing as
a funnyman make it hard for him to
be taken seriously on set? "Actually,
I'm much funnier directing than I am
on screen. I enjoy it more, so I'm
jollying around, making jokes,
and then I get everyone focused.
"The pressures of acting are far
greater than directing. You're in
make-up for hours. You're hanging
around for ages. When you're
directing, the only pressure is time."
Although Enfield admits Skins is "for the youth audience primarily",
the celebrity contingent - playing
what he calls "the slightly caricatured,
useless, mad, floundering parents" -
will lure older viewers, too.
Alongside
the return of Enfield the actor, guest
appearances in series two include
Shane Richie, Peter Capaldi,
Arabella Weir, Sean Pertwee and, this
week, the arresting spectacle of Bill
Bailey dancing with a dog.
"Parents
can watch Skins with their kids," says
Enfield, "and have a laugh. But for
the most part, I guess older people
like me, we just like to know what our
teenagers get up to, don't we?"
The basic principle of Skins,
according to Bryan Elsley, is "to treat
teenagers as sentient, intellectual
people who aren't just waiting to put
on a hoodie and stick a knife into
somebody".
Storylines are devised
by a collective of young British writing talent - from 17 up - and
focus on a gang of Bristol-based
sixth-formers, portrayed by actual
teenagers, not 20-somethings playing
it young. And, for all the tales of
hardcore, house-ravaging revelry, it is
a fundamentally optimistic drama.
So is it an accurate portrayal of
teenage life? Enfield thinks so. "Well
definitely of some: of middle-class
teenagers from Bristol. The storylines
come from the experiences of the
young writing team. That, I suppose,
gives authenticity, a voice and an edge,
that wouldn't otherwise be there."
**
Now take a look at our full Skins guide.
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