UK Series ‘Skins’ To End With One Final Series & Former Stars To Return

(Written for BritScene)

Channel 4 has announced this week that E4’s British teen drama series Skins will bow out with one final series, where famous Skins characters from all six series will star in ‘celebratory’ reappearances.

“Channel 4 today confirmed that next year’s series of E4’s teen drama Skins will be its last,” the broadcaster commented earlier this week. The series has now been recommissioned for a special seventh run, the final in the series, which will be made of three films broken into six parts.

“The new series will be a celebration of this truly iconic series, and will go to air in early 2013,” commented Channel 4. They have also promised that a number of cast members from the past five years are set to make an appearance in the series, which may include Nicholas Hoult (Tony), Kaya Scodelario (Effy), Jack O’Connell (Cook) and Luke Pasqualino (Freddie).

Whether we can take that as a hint that Freddie didn’t actually die at the end of Series 4 or whether somebody got their research wrong I do not know, but it’s great news that we will get to see some of the first and second generation cast back again.

Created by father and son television writers Bryan Elsley and Jamie Brittain, the series first launched in 2007 and is currently airing its sixth series with the third generation cast of Franky (Dakota Blue Richards), Alo (Will Merrick), Rich (Alexander Arnold), Mini (Freya Mavor), Liv (Laya Lewis), Grace (Jessica Sula), Nick (Sean Teale) and Matty (Sebastian De Souza).

“Skins is a brilliant show which has defined a generation and will go down as a game-changing piece of television,” the statement added. “But after seven series it is time for E4 to make way for the next generation of the bold, the new and the innovative.”

For US viewers, the first 5 series of Skins are currently available on Netflix Instant, with the sixth season expected to arrive soon.