Skins - Series 3, Episode 3

A different flavour this week as Thomas lands on our screen, a Congo immigrant who has travelled to England for an optimistic new start. Taking up residence in a vacant and somewhat dilapidated flat Thomas sets about carving out a place for himself – he tidies his new home, he stands up to a gang of children trying to rob a newsagents and he carries home a very stoned Pandora after bumping into her and Effie at a bus stop.

Everything seems to be going well for Thomas until an unwanted and unpleasant visitor arrives at his flat in the form of gangster Johnny White. Soon thrown into a scary and what looks like a torturous setting Johnny warns Thomas that he has moved into his patch, that the flat is his flat and that if Thomas wants in anyway to stay in the area he better listen up and pay up fast.

Thomas has an optimistic outlook on life - even when Johnny White turns up

Optimistic as always Thomas quickly sets about trying to find a job and though, whilst at the job centre they determine he has no skills of use, he soon finds himself as a cleaner at the local college, a scene where he soon once again spots the alternatively loopy Pandora. Embracing each other’s eccentricities Pandora invites him to her aunts (a wonderful cameo by Maureen Lipman) who serves up “special” tea and scones and whereupon we soon find out that she is in fact – and drawing upon one of my favourite films Saving Grace – naively growing vast quantities of cannabis in her greenhouse.

Thomas, quickly bringing an also naïve Pandora up to speed, sets upon drying, weighing and bagging up the drug, realising that if he can sell it he can easily make the money that is being demanded by gangster Johnny. A quick phone call later and our entire skins cast are on hand and at the ready to pedal the drug at an underground rave venue. Moments later they have made all the cash that Thomas needs, Emily has finally admitted that she was the one that kissed Naomi not the other way around, and Johnny White is once again on the war path after spotting the gang pushing drugs on his patch.

This time around the gang aren’t quite so lucky as the gangster and his mob catch up with them, recognising both Thomas and Cook immediately and threatening inevitable violence. However, at this point, a so far quiet and rather timid Thomas steps in, it seems the gain of friends has brought out a fire in him and he challenges Johnny White to a one on one fight – if the gangster wins then he takes all of Thomas’s money and does what he wants, if Thomas wins he leaves him and all his friends alone for good. After showing his strength of character earlier by eating an entire pot noodle at boiling point Johnny’s challenge is chillies, to eat as many as possible without flinching. After consuming one with a smirk on his face the gangster is stunned as Thomas grabs a handful and admits that he used to eat these all the time as a child, winning the challenge and ensuring his friends are never bothered again. In their ecstatic state the gang celebrate back at Thomas’s flat – the usual concoction of booze, drugs and sex – unfortunately for Thomas though his mother appears on the scene and sends him packing back to the Congo.

How will Pandora cope with the departure of her Thomas?

Continuing its brilliant new series Episode 3 throws us a slightly different style than usual with the episode focussing on a previously unknown character with very little to do with the rest of the skins gang. Thomas’s outlook on life is refreshingly bright, even when he is put in a dangerous environment and it’s a real sense of friendship survives all that champions through the episode. With Thomas sent back to Congo will we see him again? How will Pandora cope with the departure of her first kiss? And is Johnny White really going to leave the gang alone?

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