Misfits

It’s repeatedly been called Skins-meets-Heroes, and that’s a fair assessment of E4’s award winning SuperChavs teen drama Misfits, which returns to our screens tonight for its second series. It’s like Skins meets Heroes.

I’ll be honest, I didn’t watch the first series of Mifits when it came out last year; a) I was in a foreign country and b) they looked like a collection of insufferable twats. I really didn’t feel the need to watch another group of angsty teenagers having sex/fights (or sexfights) with other angry teenagers. The problem I had was that Misfists gave me the same knee-jerk reaction that Skins did: I hated the fact that TV continued to promote the idea that teenagers are all bastards. Not only are they all sex mad, and probably junkies, but they’re secret arsonists too! Yeay!

So no, I didn’t watch the first series in 2009. But then it got a BAFTA for Best Drama, and a second series, and lots and lots of positive reviews. And finally, late one night, it was on and I couldn’t find the remote. I watched, ready with vitriolic remarks of despair and laconic asides locked and loaded. But it was funny, and sad, and clever. They weren’t particularly proud of their misdemeanour, community service isn’t glamorised and the powers each of them gets as a result of being caught in one hell of an electrical storm scare the swagger right out of them.

Series two, which starts at 10pm tonight on E4 picks up pretty much where the last series left off. Nathan, the Irish cocky one, has just found out he’s immortal. Unfortunately, he’s found out on waking up in his freshly-buried coffin.
The rest of the gang; Kelly (telepathic Chav), Curtis (time-fiddling disgraced athlete), Alisha (horny-skinned drunk) and Simon (invisible uberweirdo) are adrift without him, suffering at the hands of a crazy shape-shifter whilst all the time being watched over by the King of ASBOS “Superhoodie”, their mysterious BMX-riding guardian angel. Or is he…?
Having already dispatched one murderous probation worker, a zealous do-gooder and accidentally offed a nosey social worker (whom Simon keeps in a freezer), I wonder what other community disservices this lot can get up to in 6 more episodes.

If the writing is as sharp as the first series, and the effects as dazzling, series two of Misfits should keep E4’s core viewership glued to their screens between drug-fuelled orgies at their mum’s house while she’s in Alicante with Uncle Nigel. Innit.