Skins (Series 4)

When Skins began in 2007, it caused a huge stir amongst the Conservative Daily Mail-reading crowd, who took it as proof that Britain's teenagers were all yobs-taking drugs, getting drunk and sleeping around.

What they failed to notice is the series' ability to heighten reality, and yet keep the story as real and relevant to teenagers as possible. In the first two series, characters dealt with religion, sexuality, education, eating disorders, pregnancy, stalkers and death. The actors from that series were also fantastic, with people like Dev Patel (who played doubting Muslim Anwar) and Nicholas Hoult (who played King Bee and kind-of-a-jerk Tony) going on to particular success in Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire and Tom Ford's A Single Man respectively.

However, last year the cast were traded in for the new sixth form, this time led by Tony's somewhat wayward sister, Effy (Kaya Scolderio). The last season ended with Effy, Cook (Jack O'Connell) and Freddie (Luke Pasqualino) coming to a strange kind of agreement over their romantic entaglements together. JJ (Ollie Barbieri) is happy, convinced that all his friends problems are now solved, and Emily (Kathryn Prescott) and Naomi (Lily Loveless) beginning a relationship.

It is now one year on, and this first episode centered on the life of Thomas (Mervielle Lukeba), an immigrant from Congo, struggling to deal with both his family life and his new personal life alongside his rebellious new 'friends'. This comes to a head when at the beginning on an episode a girl dies in a nightclub on his watch, probably under the influence of cocaine. The new headteacher (Chris Addison) announces the arrival of the police to try and discover who was in the club, and specifically whether anyone knew that drugs were being handled there. Things are complicated further when Thomas becomes attached to Andrea (Adelayo Adedayo), the daughter of his pastor (Steve Toussaint), despite having a girlfriend in the form of Pandora (Lisa Blackwell).

Skins still delivers it's shock tactics, with this episode opening on a girl taking crack, two sex scenes and plenty of swearing. Yet, as always, it is the performances of the cast that make it feel real. Lukeba delivers a mature and in the end heartbreaking/warming performance as Thomas, aided by the stunningly voiced Adebayo and the David Cameron-esque Addison.