Winona Ryder once said: “Dear diary, my teen angst bullshit now has a body count,” clearly she was watching Skins where, in the opening three episodes of the season, two people have been brutally butchered from the cast list. We haven’t seen one funeral.

In fact the closest we come to Richard Curtis territory is a seaside elegy and mere reference to a wedding. Obviously this is too inherently British for the residents of Bristol who are more content to wallow.

It’s all getting totes emosh up in here which is no doubt why the writers this week introduced us all to a new plucky character to reconfigure the group dynamic. He’s gay too, so that not-graphic-enough-sex-scene ticks another demographic box for the youth enveloping programme.

New Gay and dice man about town Alex got the spotlight this evening along with fag-hag Liv who’s back on the booze and off the rails, on fine form as all of her associates decide that communication is overrated. Instead, they opt for a series of scowls, smiles, and generally fraught looks.

Alex, despite the weird face and normal name, was actually a rather good character to introduce at such a late stage. They brought him in shrouded in a smug cloud of smuggish mystery, like an amateur Derren Brown looking for work in a bowling alley, but he turned out to be a well-rounded young man who actually introduced the concept of ‘see you at college’ to the group.

Obviously nobody saw anyone at college because this programme is teaching us all that you don’t need to learn things – you just need to know how to cheat at poker. We can recommend the DVD special features on the film 21 if you’re looking for a quick guide to card counting. Or just watch The Real Hustle if you can bear it.

Anyway, it was a strangely melancholy episode for Skins. With half of the cast dead or mysteriously absent, it only left a few faces to glumly teach us the art of the awkward silence and boy did they stay stony faced in solidarity. You know when your friend dies and you just knock back a few shots and don’t move on? That is exactly what happened for an hour last night on E4 – at least we had it in HD is all we’re saying. Of course it wouldn’t be Skins if there wasn’t time for a few parties, a quick flash of the tits and some reciting of Nietzsche.

Dead Grace would have loved the send-off, but she might have wondered where her boyfriend was. Rich, hi if you’re reading this –  please do come back and tell us you’re not in a mental institution for hallucinating all those moments with the one you loved after she had been dead at least 24 hours, cheers.

Frankly nothing really happened this week and it is easily the best episode of the series so far, which is a bit backwards. This is possibly because this mundanity is what being a teenager is actually like. It’s not smuggling drugs in the desert and the like. It’s sitting around, not knowing what to say.

It won’t last though. TV won’t allow a character to languish. It’ll be bags of ket in no time, with yawning predictability.

It’s a brand new week, scum buckets, and to start the downward decline is a brand spanking new episode of Skins and boy oh boy is it miserable this time around! Are you lucky?

First, let’s get real for a moment folks. This is the second episode, so they have to bring out the big guns now that everyone’s back in boring old Bristol and not some country that bristles with sexual heat, so of course, the writers needed to make an episode that tackles the burning issues—as long as something is hotter than fire we’re all happy right?

Of course there were parties and of course there was sex there was even some minimal drug use, but who isn’t rocking a casual line of coke these days. Where was the hard liquor though? We all remember the days when a bottle of vodka lasted for one quick swig, but now it seems everything’s a little too melancholy for anything stronger than a can of lager. It’s so down in the dumps this week that Phil Collins made the soundtrack when not even rain was in the air. These writers need to get their shit together and go on a rollercoaster or something.

This week it was Rich’s turn for the spotlight as he went bat-shit mental dreaming about his dead girlfriend—if you haven’t watched it yet then that right there is what we in the biz like to call a spoiler. Yeah Grace is dead now, they went to Switzerland and everything because it’s okay to euthanise (MURDER) people there. We told you there were issues. Though we’re not really sure how it tackles them in any way whatsoever, it sort of just waved at it from a passing car and said; “hey this is still a thing right? Guys?” it is indeed still a thing. Can you imagine a world where Skins solves the whole euthanasia argument because that makes us want to lethal inject our perfectly healthy bodies to death.

More in-keeping with you heathens and what proved so popular over the past five years, the show throws a party and really cleverly, they invite all their Facebook ‘friends’ to come and have an averagely good time while enjoying some mindless anarchy because, “that’s what the kids are into now right?”

Let’s all say this together…R I O T S.

See we told you there were issues, plural. Nobody can deny that’s an issue, that’s the sort of issue Skins can realistically grapple with and grapple it does. Except these upper class pritt sticks decide it’s all just a bit of harmless fun and wear their headache inducing clothes to a massive mansion to indulge in the meagre activities of the plebians. They’re all scum buckets who can’t even cry on cue so they just eat biscuits instead. If anybody offers you a biscuit when you’re sad that your friend is in a coma, you have our authority to crumble that bourbon up and put it in their hair. They probably love their precious hair. Dicks.

Then set fire to their faces and send them to Switzerland.

So it’s all a little sad this week, you might have even cried if you’re a pansy, but what we all really learnt is that you should never treat your phone like Rich does because it totally ruins the illusion of speaking to your dead girlfriend. Maybe the real issue the writers were tackling this week was insanity; there are just too many bloody layers for us all to wrap our heads around. These people are geniuses in the guise of tossers that’s what we think and you should too if you know what’s good for you.

And-roid Warhol. A psychedelic treehouse. A tank made of cheese. If there were any words we could employ to try and sway you into watching Noel Fielding’s newest “offering”, it would be these.

They show us many, many things. That Noel Fielding is sticking to his tried and tested roots of clashing the realistic with the absurd, with brain warping determination. That he clearly takes himself either far too seriously, or not serious enough. And that there clearly isn’t such a thing as flogging a dead equine.

We all liked The Mighty Boosh, that was unashamedly brilliant [No we didn't. Some of us hated it and everyone who watched it.  Ed]. Everything from the ground to The Moon was dead-on: keep things simple and fun and show everyone why Caroline Quentin probably shouldn’t be in a mismatched family unit. The mixture of boring situations clashing with fantastical characters kept us coming back for more. But Luxury Comedy seems trite and, slightly forced. Watch. Watch us how we’re magically become Noel Fielding.

“Papier-mache hedgehogs burrowing into Dave Carpets The Carpenter Apprentice afro play banjoleles about not being about to return a pair of combats to a shop because the mandatory 28-day guarantee was up.”

It’s as easy as guessing the lie detector results on Jeremy Kyle. Anyone can do it. But Fielding and Barratt (his cohort on The Mighty Boosh) were a living embodiment, almost of the ethos, behind it.

They looked the absurd parts. But with Barratt off fathering twins and doing other more serious things, it lacks the physical oomph that the straight laced, depressing Howard Moon brought. With no grounding force of banality to keep Fielding grounded, it loses some of it’s individuality. Actually, Fielding loses some of his individuality at the same time. Oddly.

The problem is that the formula behind Fielding’s comedy is flawless; take something ordinary and make it look as out of place as possible, then add a dark undertone (which is where the best jokes always lie: just look at Nighty Night – incidentally created by Julian Barratt’s wife, Julia Davis). Which is great.

But eventually, seeing bizarre things becomes routine and ordinary. Which is where Fielding seems to have failed. There was nothing new, or groundbreaking about this foray on a new channel. You can sum it up by one word. One word that Noel Fielding probably never needs to use because all of his clothes seem to look uncomfortable to wear. Like you would want everyone to have a quick peek at your balls.

Unfortunately, and it does hurt us to say this, but Noel Fielding’s Luxury Comedy is stereotyped. You know what you’re getting with it. It does what it says on the tin, except the ‘Comedy’ part. Or the ‘Luxury’.

So ‘Noel Fielding’ then.

Shame. We’ll always have Mod Foxes.

Before we even start talking about the first episode of the new season of Skins can we just discuss the opening titles for a second? As per usual they are the best thing about the show, but they’re also artistic to the point of idiocy.

Why anybody would put an opening sequence so shiny and clearly full of effort onto this absolute shambles of youth television is beyond us. They make you think you might be watching something with vague pretensions of quality instead of a braying collection of ingrate arseholes.

Apparently the writers thought that ‘Racism’ might be a good theme to adopt this year and so the girls colour code each other and add the suffix ‘bitch’ to the end of all terms of endearment, for example: “Hey black bitch, hey white bitch.” It’s like a novelty smack-talking chess set. They all seem to be much more fulfilled in themselves though so it’s clearly worth trying in your own life. Skins after all does come across as a manual for good, clean, wholesome living.

We’re now old and haggard and not the intended audience, though it does seem that they don’t really have an intended audience anymore, so the childrens’ partydar is lost on us. If you’re on holiday with your mates in a private villa with a lot of drugs then it’s just not necessary to find and involve other even more meagre samples of the human race, they’re just going to throw a spanner in the works.

Right on cue, after the whole Alo finally shagging Mini thing that we’ve been waiting all of ten minutes for, mechanical items are being lodged in all places and the horrible snivelling whiter-than-white boy, Luke, decides to consensually kidnap the no longer androgynous or interesting Franky. As Mini so aptly puts it: “I liked her better when she may or may not have been a lesbian,” yes we just quoted Skins, get the fuck over it, it’s a beacon of knowledge and hope for tens of people. Later there’s a menial car crash which incapacitates Grace so that hopefully we won’t have to hear her ridiculous excuse of a voice for the rest of the season other than in her cocking composition which will undoubtedly rear its head every time Rich is on screen lamenting the hopelessness of it all. Are you still with us?

Basically what’s happened is things have got deep and everybody has lost their entire not very interesting to begin with personality traits and exchanged them for a styling session at American Apparel. There are more colour clashes here than character based ones and believe us when we tell you we have a headache now. Not even Chris Addison could be arsed to turn up for work so instead he sent a letter and they got Josie Long to say an extra line while still in the ‘guise’ of a dimwit, oh yeah Dobby from Peep Show is now in it because for some reason the older Brits are desperately clinging on to a hedonistic time gone by.

The issue with this third generation is that they are absolute wankers and they all know it.

At least last season Franky and her ‘mind fuck’ Matty were brooding and heavily emoting their teenage sexual aggression, now they’re just arguing about Morrissey and Simone De ‘cultural reference’ Beauvoir. Quite frankly we think they should all just grow up and tell that Ryder dick to piss off because while he’s barely ever on screen his musk lingers like putrefaction and he makes us want to punch ourselves in the face just thinking about his bare chest.

If there’s one of these remorseless pricks that we do love to hate though, it’s Kyle; the young twat responsible for making sure the soundtrack to each episode is, like, totally hyper relevant and boomin’. Of course he doesn’t disappoint as the episode opens with an NME approved act Azealia Banks—bit sweary if you ask us—and then blasts through more Segal than you can shake a stick at with some Scott Matthews for those moments of melancholy, reflection, depression, death, and the moping. Maybe next week they can just stick the Scott Matthews record on and cut between some sombre close-ups, it sounds way more avant garde which is obviously the whole point of this exercise anyway.

There you have it, sub-species- our critical analysis of the first episode of the ‘oh god when will it end’ new season of Skins. It sure looks like it’s going to be full of the hateful mediocrity that made all the other years such as delight. If getting a life was on your cards this year then now’s a great time to consider putting that plan into action. Us, we wouldn’t dare so we’ll be right here all over again next week continuing to win the record for slowest suicide ever.

If you’re under the age of 22 then you will be familiar with the Daily Mail’s nemesis; common sense. Whoops! That should read Skins. If you’re living like the characters in the show, then you’re probably dead and we offer our sincerest sympathies; we died around the same time as Tony who was paralysed by youthful happiness and, you know, a bus.

If you’re lucky enough to be a child now, then we can blame you for the continued success of what is shaping up to be a life affirming/sucking programme.

Either way you will all be suitably disappointed to find out that a new series is going to be cuming (see what we did there?) to E4 on Monday. There are mere days to prepare yourself. Here in the ‘spray bedsit we like to think of Skins as a disease and as you know, with diseases, you must inoculate yourself with small doses to become immune. Based on that logic and no small amount of self-loathing we subjected, or watched, the two ‘webisodes’ on that thing some of you are calling The Internet. It’s a sharp learning curve for us all.

We’re still on the third cast of complete and utter hopeless specimens and this time they will be entering their second year of a 6^th form run by snivelling political comedy insurance vendor Chris Addison, but not before a little and undoubtedly highly believable dramatic holiday to somewhere sunny. There will be beer  five litres of vodka, there will be drugs, there will be sex, and there will be nothing resembling an average teenage experience. Leading up to this spectacle is where the web episodes come in and steal 20 minutes of your life which could have been used better by staring at a brown wall and contemplating the relevance of the colour brown.

For the sake of everyone, we’re merging these two together in no particular order, all you need to know is that it starts with wanking and ends with two boys, one of whom has gained A LOT of weight, in a bathroom debating who gets to shove the drugs up their arse.

You did NEED to know that didn’t you?

In between a ginger boy fails to have sex with one of those easy goth girls and reaffirms two stereotypes that are going to cause millions of children to be bullied by the bastardised youths watching this drivel and a man who we reckon is probably a heavyweight in the realm of British acting, smokes a lot of weed and talks about his ‘iron lungs’ before being mugged and only slightly sexually assaulted. IF IT WASN’T FOR THOSE PESKY KIDS, EH?

Christ it’s an awful show these days, remember when Nicholas Holt was in it? Wasn’t that vaguely all right? Not even the world’s worst named child Dakota Blue Richards can make it better; though she often tries with her stony glances and androgyny.

Anyway if you can’t be dicked or have some sort of sense about you then you probably shouldn’t watch this. Always the antagonists we will be shunning the popular consensus and tuning in every single week to numb the mind before providing you lucky kiddies with our pearls of wisdom on whatever grandiose shit went down the following day.

So try not to kill yourself and come back here or else we’ll throw a massive, obviously, Skins Party—a popular term meaning house full of dicks—and you won’t be invited and you’ll feel really bad when you see all the photos on Facebook.

When E4 had eventually grown tired of showing endless repeats of Friends and Scrubs, the channel eventually spat out its own unique programming, aimed at the sort of person that hecklerspray writers aren’t; the young, the cool, the hip and the trendy. Arseholes, basically.

On one end of the spectrum, there was Skins, a programme which captured everyone’s dream college lifestyle, in a show which frequently used drugs, booze and sex, but portrayed them in the most extreme way to great effect.

Skins was escapism for most whilst The Inbetweeners offered a firmer dose of reality, especially for hormonal teenage boys. These are the sort of people who couldn’t quite make that move from fingering a girl to using an empty packet of Space Raiders as a makeshift condom when that first awkward sexual experience arrived.

The show has, like many of its Channel 4 predecessors, made the leap from small screen to the cinema, or a dodgy DVD off someone in the pub. The Inbetweeners Movie has broken UK box office records, even though it feels like a watered down version of the TV series.

We don’t have a total feeling of hate towards The Inbetweeners. If anything we truly admire something that was able to last an impressive three series, despite having the same jokes more or less each week. Whether they’d be about Will’s mum, mocking Jay’s supposed conquests, alternative words for the female lady garden or generally being rejected by women when a vague opportunity arose.

After series three finished, it almost seemed like the natural place to finish. For once, a TV show wasn’t going to finish with flashbacks, somebody waking up in the shower or a gathering of ninjas bursting into kill everyone. Instead, the main characters went on a camping trip following on from taking their A-Levels. As per real life, this is the time that most people take their first independent holiday abroad and this is where The Inbetweeners film takes us.

In a nutshell, the film goes along these lines of all four characters going to Magaluf one of them keeps on seeing an old flame, four new women enter the scene, they all fall in love and make a mess of it, all before patching things up at the end. Suffice to say, it’s a run of the mill plot which could be applied to any situation in life, such as moving to a new city or starting a job, all be it with minor script changes.

Sitcoms like The Inbetweeners always do well as people incessantly latch onto and copy the catchphrases. These are the same people who delight in posting the term “lol” on your Facebook status. Choice highlights from the TV show include “bus wanker”, “clunge” and mocking anyone who says the word “friend” in a tone similar to someone who’s just experienced a stroke.

In this movie however, there doesn’t seem to be any memorable moments that stick in the memory once you’ve left the cinema. Of course there are moments of humour but based around a lad’s holiday abroad, most people have been there and done it, making the viewing experience nothing out of the ordinary. Erratic drunken behaviour and unexpected surprises? Not particularly groundbreaking or imaginative.

But the people of Britain have flocked to the flicks, catapulting it in to the record books for a UK comedy. Whilst the movie industry will be celebrating high visitor numbers, we’re sure that pissed off cinema staff won’t be happy when they have to clean up spilt drinks and thrown snacks after pack screenings finish. Unless you’re a cinema buff, you probably won’t know this little snippet:

“Between Wednesday and Sunday The Inbetweeners Movie took £13.2m, putting it comfortably on top of the UK and Ireland box office chart. Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason held the previous record for highest opening by a UK comedy. According to the producers of The Inbetweeners Movie, that film took £10.4m in its first weekend in 2004.”

If movies based on real life experiences are going down a treat at the box office, then we’ll be working on a script over the next few months in which three people have an awkward conversation in a launderette. Eventually, one of them will realise that they’ve mixed their colours with their whites… with hilarious consequences.

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Hey! Adults! Like watching children’s programmes filled with hideous, soul-sapping, nine million part harmonies, systematically destroying all those pop songs you love? Then, chances are, you like watching Glee and consider yourself to be a member of the corporate-designed clan of The Gleek.

Well, for people like us who like laughing at people like you, we’ve got some wonderful news! Glee is no longer going to be on your television.

That’s right, Glee won’t be shown on E4 after parent company Channel 4 decided to walk away from negotiations for the forthcoming series, leaving the show to Do A Richard & Judy. That basically means that it’ll slope off toward the blank chequebook of Sky, watched on television by a scant handful of people, leaving those who can really be bothered to stream it illegally online. Essentially, the show is about to die, which is brilliant news.

Sky have apparently offered more than double the amount Channel 4 coughed-up for the first two seasons, which means that, if you don’t want/can’t afford a Sky subscription, you can kiss Glee’s candy-arse goodbye and mourn the days when you’d sit before your television, agog, while pneumatic Americans destroyed entire back-catalogues of music in one felled swoop.

But Jane Lynch is pretty cool.

Of course, Channel 4 are trying to put a positive spin on it all, noting that Glee’s greed is the broadcaster’s gain. By not renewing the show, it will free up “huge amounts”, leaving them to focus on “home-grown programming, British talent and… continuing to discover and showcase what the US has to offer”.

So basically, that means throwing money at spectacularly unfunny humans like Kevin Bishop then.

Oh, let us not forget that Channel 4 has also secured the rights to the US version of Danish crime drama The Killing, which naturally, is the same target audience as the slack-jawed dimwits who like watching young men and women wearing vest-tops while being in the world’s uncoolest choir.

Gleeks – it might be time to consider getting a life.

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This may come as a shock to people used to the gritty realism of documentaries like Eastenders, Coronation Street, and Strictly Come Dancing - but it’s pretty much all smoke and mirrors. Even the bits that look really real, like the copious twirling. It’s all staged and you’re being played like a fiddle.

There’s a show that’s two episodes in, called Made in Chelsea. It’s basically The Only Way is Essex but with more-abrasive accents and less fake tan. The show centres around the entirely contrived lives of a group of people we’re no longer convinced even know each other.

Let’s start at the beginning – the show follows wealthy 20-somethings as they walk around Chelsea in circles, occasionally making passive-aggressive remarks toward each other. Producers fill any awkward gaps with scenery or shots of the cast wishing they were somewhere else. An hour long show contains about 30 minutes of the cast, mouths agape and struggling to find some witty put down for the asshole who crossed their paths while wearing Topshop.

Because we hecklers all live together, we like each other, and we occasionally go to the loo together, we’ve been watching this show together. It’s more out of morbid curiosity than anything. Kind of like watching a snuff film, we guess. And we think there has never been so many unlikeable people in one British reality show before. And we’re including all Big Brother contestants, so that’s a lot of people we’re counting.

And this isn’t random rich people-hating. It’s plain old fashioned people-hating. As we gather most of the people from the show lack the social standing that supposedly informs the narrative. The Daily Mail, who started off gleefully planting a positive story before watching the show, has since turned against it. They were so desperate for negative material that they crafted an entire report based on nothing but a dozen Twitter reactions from after the pilot aired.

At this point The Mail is fishing a little, but what they’re finding is shedding light on the level of deception that goes into creating, scripting, and conjuring parts of this show.

The cast is, incidentally, of a lower social standing than the show suggests because no better socialites would agree to be filmed. The Mail notes that some were signed up, but then ‘many of the genuine socialites and high-society members [who] signed up dropped out when they realised it could affect their social standing.’

More to the point, most of the cast aren’t important enough to be members of the fancy pants places in which they film. For example, episode one shows an event in a nightclub: scenes show club-goers and bar staff who are fairly sparsely spaced, a door man, one of the cast, who stands outdoors during what’s clearly early evening. Turns out the indoors scenes were shot during the day, with only paid extras and cast, with the venue hired for the purpose.

None of the cast were even members of the £400 to join, an additional £400-per-year to remain a member, Raffles nightclub.

When real members learned of the scenes that essentially peed all over their fees they complained, forcing the hand of the management who issued a statement.

We would like to confirm that the production company for Made In Chelsea have rented our venue on a few occasions – during the day – to film scenes for their television programme. The hire-outs were standard day-time venue hire that we were very happy to accommodate. We wish them and the cast the best of luck with the TV programme. We will be maintaining our strict policy of allowing access for members and their friends only during normal evening trading hours.

Fun times: partying with other unimportant people, in the daytime, while surrounded by extras.

We’re pretty sure the cast physically exist, as in you could reach right out and punch them, but don’t hold us to that.

This was a guest post by Amy Grindhouse, so three stinkin’ cheers for that.

Every time a new cast of Skins is announced, people mourn the last lot who they initially slagged off, but eventually ended up furiously masturbating over. So why not cut out all the moaning and crying about how much you’ll miss Simpie, Razzle and Dimpo (or whatever the last lot were called) and just make with the wanking right now?

E4 has announced the names of the new cast members on Skins and, as ever, the two year cull has brought new faces, whittled down from 7,000 hopefuls who auditioned.

Don’t worry. There’s a bigger picture to stare at after the jump.

Skins executive producer John Griffin said: “More people than ever turned up this year for the open auditions in London and Bristol and the standard of young talent was as high as ever. It was a huge process but incredibly rewarding and we hope that the auditionees had as much fun as we did.

“We are really excited about the talent that has come through and we now have a brilliant cast of actors helping to create the exciting new characters for Skins series five.”

And here they all are… stood against a wall. You will certainly see over half of these in their undercrackers at some point. Try and spot the one who will be into doing loads of Ket or something dreary.

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Remember that new E4 show Misfits we previewed a few weeks back?

No? Well, it’s become quite popular with everyone apart from you apparently.

We sent our very own bumbling reporter Keith Emmerson to meet a few members of the cast who turn out to be much more charming than their characters…

A new E4 series called Misfits you say? About a group of young delinquents doing community service?

We’ve not been this put off a new TV series since the Bad Girls pilot. In fact, the likelihood of a good series coming from E4 is akin to that of finding a hen’s tooth, or Tess Daly‘s soul.

Imagine the disquiet and shock which consumed us when we saw the first episode of this teen-insert genre here and discovered it’s actually quite good. Maybe Tess Daly has a soul after all.*

To get the comparison cliché out of the way, Misfits can be best described as Dead Set meets Heroes meets Shameless. There’s certainly a comic book feel to it à la Heroes, despite writer Howard Overman maintaining ignorance of the illustration laden literature.

In this television programme, a number of actors pretend to possess a different personality to their own, in a number of staged situations and circumstances. Their words are also not their own, they are given to them beforehand by the aforementioned writer, Howard Overman. In the opening episode this group of young, mostly unknown actors pretend to perform manual tasks in order to fulfil the community service aspect of their respective characters’ sentencing. An artificially created storm interrupts them, and through a combination of wind, rain, and CG effects, they are struck by lightning. None of them are harmed – on the contrary, they awake with some super powers. They are bestowed with the ability to hear thoughts, turn back time, become invisible, and to instil in people an intense sexual desire.

This wee acting conglomerate is lead by Robert Sheehan, a young Irishman best known for his role as BJ in the excellent Red Riding series. Robert (or Nathan, as he purports to be in this) provides plentiful comic relief in the Irish craic style popularised by Les Dennis‘ impression of Graham Norton in Extras.

In series such as this or Heroes, realism and grittiness are highly sought-after commodities. Such things are mostly unobtainable in a fantasy scenario such as this, so a substantial amount of credit is due to this relatively inexperienced writer. Howard has also successfully captured the often foul dialogue of teenagers while retaining enough clarity in order for it to be understood by a wider audience.

An impressive social media campaign will be running alongside the series to both accompany and expand on the story arc via Twitter, Facebook and YouTube etc. To make this worthwhile to viewers, those who pay close attention will be rewarded with a character who won’t be revealed on TV till episode six, amongst other things.

All in all, this looks set to be one of those popular ones.

Misfits starts on E4 on Thurs Nov 12 at 10pm

*She doesn’t.

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OMG! Skins is back! E4’s modern-day take on one side of ‘yoof culture’ returns to make everyone feel like they have crap parties, old and extremely unfashionable.

After establishing itself as one of E4′s more successful shows which isn’t Friends or Big Brother, the programme has taken a strange and swift change of direction. Instead of building on the foundations of the second series, the producers have instead decided to tell the original cast to bugger off as they’ve hired some fresh meat.

At the end of Skins 2, we all cried a little tear as each character got their A-level results and went off to do their own thing. Nerdy Sid decided he was going to hunt New York City for Cassie, the love of his life. Someone should have told him though that the city is a big place. At least double the size of Bristol.

The group of friends did put aside their bickering to unite as one at the funeral of Chris who died from a blood clot to the brain. What a shitter, his girlfriend Jal was up the duff with his child. Oh well, she can always rely on the state for some benefit money.

Patchy lovers Tony and Michelle ended up getting the results they needed to get in to Uni. The distance between Cardiff and York seemed to stretch their rekindled romance as they amicably called it off. This comes despite everyone knowing students don’t do 9-5 days and spend most of their time getting pissed, eating Pot Noodles and plagiarising essays off Wikipedia and Google Books.

Where does that leave us then? The only member of the cast to have been retained is Effy, the sister of Tony. Whilst making the odd appearance in a couple of episodes, we are warmly reminded of the time when she got wasted on drugs and was saved by her brother who was nearly made to make sweet incestuous love to his sister.

So who have we got to replace the existing characters? E4’s website lists the following people who between them will consume Bristol’s entire supply of pills while bopping around to wooden-sounding electro.

Pandora – An adorable virgin. This basically means she will lose her virginity at some point. But who will be the first to spread her legs and get in to her love box? You know, Pandora’s Box? Oh never mind.

Thomas – Thomas is a good honest soul and has moved to a new country. More than likely he’ll be corrupted and involved in countless sex sessions involving a bottle of chilli sauce and some pliers.

Cook – Cook pulls off daring and dangerous stunts. He’ll be the one to arse everything up, the annoying person who constantly craves attention.

Freddie – Has got bags of potential but no va va vooom. Thierry Henry will solve this by giving him a new Renault.

JJ – The master illusionist has a huge imagination. With child-like excitement, he dreams up entertaining schemes. After cutting an assistant in half by mistake, he’ll morph into a younger Paul Daniels to be more like his idol.

Katie – Super smart Katie is shedding her identical twin skin. Either she’ll take some drugs, go a rave or stay up past her normal bedtime. She’s Emily’s twin!

Emily – Likes being a twin, but she’s crippled by her own shyness. Blah blah blah, she’ll find some confidence and do some sort of hilarious swap with her twin sister Emily in an exam.

Naomi – Passionate, political and principled, no one believes in anything anymore. Erm…we don’t know. Maybe she’ll burn her bra.

So, there we go. Expect shagging, swearing and all sorts of mental behaviour! Does it reflect our childhood in an easy-to-digest hour-long show? No, not really – we experienced things more like E4’s other home-grown show The Inbetweeners. Go on, admit it. It’s a more realistic portrayal of teenage life.

Skins series 3 begins tomorrow on E4. Let’s go crazy!

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Everyone has things they’d like to forget; that time you were sick and blamed it on the dog, the ‘homely looking’ date who ended up staying for breakfast, or perhaps the hours you wasted watching Echo Beach. Straight in the memory trash can every single one.

In new US import Samantha Who, however, the list of things to forget is as long and distinguished as Slider’s Johnson, featuring a lead character who just can’t remember a damned thing.

As it turns out, that’s a definite plus for Samantha Newly (Christina Applegate), the victim of a hit and run who awakes from an eight-day coma only to discover she has retrograde amnesia.

Family and friends are strangers, but the one thing that our Sam can discern is that until right now, she has spent her life as a full time megabitch who could give lessons in how to lose friends and alienate people.

The premise of the show is that Sam now has to go about discovering the extent of her old ‘Bad Sam’ persona, torn between Andrea – her old partner in putdowns – and Dena, a rejected high school friend who has taken advantage of Sam’s amnesia to announce herself new BFF number one.

If that all sounds slightly familiar, that’s because, er, it is. My Name Is Earl has already trod similar ground, albeit with more invention and humour, and as Sandra Bullock’s remaining fans will remember, While You Were Sleeping also rings a few bells here.

Lack of originality may not be a surprise from co-creator and producer Cecilia Ahern though; the daughter of former Irish Taoiseach Bertie Ahern was responsible for the novel of Hilary Swank vehicle PS I Love You, a rom-com so sickly sweet it could remove your stomach lining.

Not that that has held Samantha Who back, and after a successful first run in the states with Emmy nominations for both Applegate and Jean Smart as her fame-hungry mother Regina, the second season is starting soon on ABC.

How they’re going to keep the plot going will be interesting to see, but this pilot episode does have plenty to enjoy. Applegate does her ‘yes I’m really pretty, but ooh, I’m so sarcastic’ brand of humour that worked so well in Anchorman, and when she reverts to ‘Bad Sam’ she’s a lot of fun to watch.

Jean Smart is also sharp as her laughably bad mother, throwing some great barbs at Jennifer Esposito’s Andrea and stealing most of the scenes she’s in.

So it’s passable, if very girly, fun – but then what is Sunday night E4 for? It could definitely be a grower, but it seems that Samantha Who, like her own past, may be all too easily forgotten.