1. It Feels Disconnected From What We've Seen Before
When you change a lot of things about a television programme, there will always be a sense of disconnection because a number of the elements that people were familiar with have been dropped. This has been par for the course for Skins since 2009 but the onset of Series 7 feels like a wider change than weve experienced before. Although the change of cast at the start of Series 3 was the first big change to the programme, a feeling of total disconnection was avoided by Effy and Pandora being upgraded to the main cast and several side characters being retained. The start of Series 5 was the programmes biggest disconnect with no main characters staying on from Series 4 and only a few minor characters crossing over from the previous series. Although Series 7s main cast is made up entirely of returning characters, there are other elements that make it feel disconnected from the rest of the programme. Cooks episodes will have some connection to his past and Effys episodes include Emily and Naomi as supporting characters but apart from that, Series 7 is almost a total disconnect to a point where it seems more like a spin-off than a continuation. Theres no ensemble cast as is usual for Skins, there are very few returning characters, and the episodes are set predominantly in London and Manchester rather than Bristol. Not to mention that the broad plot is shifting to the characters adapting to adult life rather than them facing the trials of adolescence and the episode-specific plots are more in keeping with that. After all, we'd never have seen an episode about shady dealings at a hedge fund in previous series. Bryan Elsley and Jamie Brittain might pull something out of the bag and surprise us with another returning character or closer connections to the past episodes, but at the moment it just feels like its very far removed from Skins as we know it. Now that Ive finished being pessimistic, its time to look on the bright side as we count down the reasons why were optimistic...