From “my name is Bethan Gwyndaf” to “I’ve been lying since I was eight“, confessions of the main character of the British series ‘in my skin‘ that do not take place precisely in that order, two seasons pass of a fiction that will inevitably leave your heart scarred for better and for worse.
This original BBC series can now be seen in Spain, after the premiere on Anglo-Saxon television of its first season in 2018 and the production of a second in 2021, through Filmin.
Before putting it on, a warning: ‘In my skin’ cannot be seen, but is devoured; not only due to the fact that each season is made up of five episodes of about 30 minutes, approximately, nor due to the fact that they have great similarities with other gems such as ‘Fleabag’ or ‘Derry Girls’. Rather, it is an addictive and special series for being raw tragicomedy and showing the opposite poles of a life without privileges.
The need to live in deception
Beth has nothing to do with the rest of the 17-year-old Welsh teenagers who populate ‘In my skin’ despite the fact that they all have their certain strident peculiarities, which do not stop creating striking characters that complete the universe without taking the viewer out from the screen.
The protagonist of the series is conditioned every day to class with an emotional backpack that she does not want to be discovered: the fact that his mother, diagnosed with bipolar disorderhas every two or three nervous crises that destabilize her and, with it, they also manage to drag her daughter and the addition that your father is an alcoholic with abusive and violent behavior which makes everything even more difficult. No care, no money, and no escape.
When you’re in that, you tend to look for an escape route in an imagined world that you can control and whose script relieves some of the pain and, ultimately, social shame that Bethan manifests to have for something that It’s not your responsibility and it’s not your fault..
Even so, ‘In my skin’ portrays well that lapidary feeling that the system exerts on the victims and survivors of sexist violencewith an extra plus of responsibility on the character by having to act, many times, as the mother in the relationship with her own parent, who is dragged along during a good part of the chapters by her mental illness.
Despite the fact that ‘In my skin’ has a lot of emotional charge and that part of its magic lies precisely in that, the character he plays Welsh actress Gabrielle Creevy he is extremely funny and giggly. It makes you want to befriend her immediately when you see her pure personality when she plays pranks with her two best friends, Lydia and Travis, or when she begins to discover her sexuality with classmates who will become the her first loves. This charm is accompanied by a duality because Bethan is a ‘fraud’, she sells an image of family and normative house always interesting for the cultural plans and assets they possess when the reality is that at home there is almost never anything to cook and no money in their pocket.
The protagonist needs to live deceived —hence the phrase “I have been lying since I was eight years old”— to survive within the circle of sexist violence and a cesspool that consumes her for being violated and, at the same time, having to take care of her mother. This is where the idea of needing to inhabit another life is born, at least facing the gallery, and at the same time show that the character takes refuge, as happens with Alex in ‘La assistant’, in art: specifically in creative writing.
Part of that letting her ‘I’ fly freely is also reflected in images, when viewers find themselves on certain occasions with Bethan’s daydreams that come to anticipate what would be the scenario desired by the protagonist.
The life of desire and non-existence
Within this aspirational game, ‘In my skin’, created and written by **Kayleigh Llewellyn and directed by Molly Manners and Lucy Forbes (winner of the Bafta Cymru, the Welsh branch of the British awards, for best direction for this series and also director of part of the second season of ‘The End of the Fxxxing World’), dares to do something that is not present in the majority of audiovisual products that can deal with sexist violence in one way or another.
Bethan Gwyndaf expresses in a couple of moments, with images or with words, his most irrational desire to see his father dead (or even to kill) for the before and after that could be in his life. That line of thought was something that, until now, had remained quite hidden in the case of other stories and here, however, it comes to light without complexes, without being forced and portraying one more layer of those characters who live in reality. cruel of fiction that connects with the violence of the real world.
The series would not be the same nor would it attract so much if it did not walk, mainly hand in hand with Beth, between the completely wild and hilarious tone and the insane and exhausting pause that distances the protagonist from the much sought-after escape, the one that she also achieves by showing off with her friends or approaching who she likes, especially the love story of the second season being the most special for being the purest definition of a first love.
The moments that Bethan shares with her mother and grandmother in the privacy of her home or in the inpatient clinic are those that show her less filtered self and without the need to pretend, the fragile and full of fears that is also quite conditioned by the urgency of protecting her mother, played by actress Jo Hartley. In those sweet moments, family dynamics that occur in violent environments are also collected, such as, for example, when the protagonist’s grandmother asks her granddaughter to have some indulgence with her father’s abusive behavior and treat her well in the day to day.
The two seasons of ‘In my skin’ start with very different starting points to help the character walk the path from ‘shame’ to self-pride, for what has been achieved despite the spiral of violence and chaos. The center of everything seems to be from the beginning the unbreakable relationship between mother and daughter, but in truth it is talking about an act of rebellion against the world and the irrational order of things: prioritizing oneself despite everything.
when Bethan break the fourth wall and look directly at the viewer without cutting yourself who is watching ‘In my skin’, there is no doubt about the power of attraction that it is capable of awakening.