TV Shows Like Skins
If you like Skins, here are 10 similar TV shows — each with its current AI renewal verdict, so you can see which are still going and which have been cancelled.
E4 · Drama · Skins is ended
Skins earned its reputation by refusing to be polite about adolescence. Set in Bristol and built around a rotating cast of teenagers, it captured the particular chaos of being young: the bad decisions, the genuine grief, the friendships that feel like everything, and the moments of joy that arrive sideways. It was funny and brutal in almost equal measure, and it trusted its audience to sit with both. The show treated its characters as real people rather than cautionary tales, which is a harder trick to pull off than it sounds.
The best shows like Skins
1. Euphoria
Euphoria takes the same raw, unflinching approach to teenage life that made Skins so distinctive, and turns the dial up considerably. It follows a group of high school students through drugs, sex, trauma, and the particular pressures of social media, and it does not look away from any of it. If you liked Skins at its darkest and most visually striking, this is the obvious next stop.
Stream on HBO Max, HBO Max Amazon Channel, Spectrum On Demand
Likely Cancelled22%
2. Sex Education
Sex Education is probably the closest structural match to Skins: a British school-set comedy-drama with a large ensemble, a genuine interest in teenage sexuality and identity, and a tone that moves easily between funny and affecting. The humour is weirder and more absurdist than Skins, but the warmth it has for its characters is the same. Fans who appreciated how Skins handled LGBT storylines without making them the whole point of a character will find a lot to appreciate here.
Stream on Netflix, Netflix Standard with Ads
Ended0%
3. Never Have I Ever
Never Have I Ever is funnier and less bleak than Skins, but it shares the same understanding that being a teenager involves real loss alongside the embarrassments and romantic disasters. The central character is trying to reinvent herself after a traumatic year, and the show is honest about how much grief sits underneath the comedy. It is a good option if you want something that captures the feeling of Skins without the heaviest edges.
Stream on Netflix, Netflix Standard with Ads
Ended0%
4. Girls
Girls follows four women in their twenties in New York, which sounds like a departure, but the DNA is familiar: an ensemble of people who are often selfish, frequently wrong, and genuinely interesting to watch. The show is irreverent and candid about sex, ambition, and friendship in ways that should feel immediately comfortable to Skins fans. It is sharper and more cynical than Skins, but it has the same refusal to let its characters off the hook.
Stream on HBO Max
Ended0%
5. Bad Girls
Bad Girls is set in a women's prison rather than a sixth form, but it shares Skins' taste for complicated characters and storylines that mix light and dark without warning. It is a long-running British drama with a genuine ensemble feel, and it takes its characters, including the staff as much as the prisoners, seriously. Fans who liked the way Skins found humanity in people making bad choices will find plenty of the same here.
Ended0%
More on shows like Skins
Fans of Skins tend to want a few specific things when they go looking for something new. They want characters who feel unfinished, who make choices that are frustrating and recognisable at the same time. They want the show to take teenage or young-adult experience seriously without sanitising it. A bit of dark humour helps. So does a willingness to let storylines go somewhere genuinely uncomfortable rather than tidying everything up before the credits.
The recommendations here cover a fair amount of ground. Euphoria is the closest in tone to Skins at its most intense, with a visual style that matches the emotional register of its characters. Sex Education is the most directly comparable in structure, a British school-set comedy-drama that handles difficult subjects with warmth and a lot of wit. Never Have I Ever is lighter and funnier, but it understands the specific embarrassments and losses of being a teenager. Girls shifts the setting to post-university New York but keeps the same interest in young people behaving badly and trying to figure out who they are. Bad Girls is the outlier, a British drama that trades the school setting for a women's prison, but it shares Skins' appetite for messy, complicated characters and storylines that mix the serious with the darkly comic.
None of these are perfect replacements for Skins, because nothing really is. But each one has at least one thing that made Skins worth watching, and for different fans that will mean different shows rise to the top of the list.
More shows like Skins
Frequently asked
- What is the most popular show like Skins?
- Euphoria is the most popular show similar to Skins in the IsItRenewed catalogue.
- Are shows like Skins still on the air?
- Of the 10 shows similar to Skins listed here, 0 currently carry a renewed verdict — the rest are cancelled, ended, or awaiting a decision.
- How does IsItRenewed pick shows like Skins?
- The recommendations come from TMDB's similar-titles data, and each is shown with its current AI renewal verdict so you know which are still going.