Racy new British teen series strives to outpace its American influences

If you missed the U.S. premiere of the randy new British series "Skins" earlier this week, consider yourself lucky.

Now is when things really start to get interesting.

As a show about precocious British teenagers, "Skins" is heavily indebted to the chatty "Dawson's Creek" (which it quoted directly in the pilot) and the more racy and recent "Gossip Girl," as well as the issues-oriented Canadian "DeGrassi" soap opera and its spinoffs. Its first episode was really just an exercise in how much it could get away with - and how much it could irritate concerned parents in the audience. Yet the second episode, which ran back-to-back with the premiere on BBC America, found it discovering a storytelling style all its own as it focused on one of the characters, and that trend continues with the third episode running at 9 p.m. Sunday on BBCA.

Like a good rap song, "Skins" is determined to alienate elements of the audience to set itself apart from the mainstream, but it's also got a lot going on.

First things first: Although it's about teenagers and boasts a writing staff said to have an average age of 22, "Skins" is adult fare, much like "Gossip Girl." "Dawson's Creek" appealed to teens by having them talk like hyper-eloquent adults, but "Skins," like "Gossip Girl," appeals to teens by placing them in adventures even the show's disclaimer admits are "of an adult nature." After all, "skins" is British slang for both condoms and rolling papers, and the pilot made that connection clear at the end - right before these teenagers allowed a stolen car to roll into a harbor.

Yet that's actually the show at its most derivative and least interesting, in the machinations of the shaker-mover Tony, played by Nicholas Hoult, familiar to U.S. viewers as the title character in the Hugh Grant drama "About a Boy." His Tony has a look - and an amorality - in common with Ed Westwick's Chuck Bass in "Gossip Girl," as he uses his various friends to play off each other and get what he wants.

Yet the second episode turned its attention to Hannah Murray's Cassie, a self-destructive anorexic with an airy-fairy attitude reminiscent of Luna Lovegood in the "Harry Potter" movies. (Similarly, there's a Ron Weasley quality to Mike Bailey's Sid, the shuffling sidekick to Tony.) The second episode crawled inside her head, as it watched her fingers as they seemed to race along a banister and as cell-phone texts, billboards and even the food on her plate kept repeating a nagging message: "Eat!"

That pattern persists with Sunday's third episode, which focuses on Larissa Wilson's Jal, a promising young clarinetist who also happens to be the daughter of a Sean Combs-style British music producer. She clashes with her dad's bubblehead-blond Sporty Spice girlfriend, then, given a sheet of talking points by the school director for a series of media chats she's arranged to showcase the school and its music department, she gives a surly set of interviews. Dressed up by Tony's glamour-puss girlfriend Michelle (April Pearson) to look "shaggable" by showing off a little cleavage, she has to keep telling the boys in the group to "stop looking at them!"

Like Cassie before her, she comes off as complex and sympathetic. Yet even at that the show doesn't lose sight of the other characters. When Michelle tells Sid, "I know you fancy me," but that she thinks of them as brother and sister, he suggests, "We could be like a Welsh brother and sister." Likewise, look at how Jal's foul-mouthed music teacher, her poseur rapper brothers and even her dad's muscle henchmen all establish themselves as immediately identifiable side characters. This is a well-written and well-executed show that more often than not puts "Gossip Girl" to shame.

That said, it isn't perfect. There's a hackneyed subplot involving a drug dealer Sid owes money to, and it can do things just to be outrageous. (Next week it will examine Joe Dempsie's Chris, who left to his own devices by his mum, will play host to a wild party.)

There's some genuinely intriguing television being done here, and it's already generating buzz. My college-age daughter was clued into it this summer by a friend returned from an exchange-student program in Scotland, and "Skins" is already all over YouTube in snippets. So forget all the predictable controversy of "Gossip Girl": That's so 2007. The cool kids have moved on to "Skins" - and rightfully so.