{"id":7932,"date":"2017-06-27T09:53:53","date_gmt":"2017-06-27T13:53:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/from-skins-to-clique\/"},"modified":"2017-10-24T16:51:57","modified_gmt":"2017-10-24T20:51:57","slug":"from-skins-to-clique","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/from-skins-to-clique\/","title":{"rendered":"Clique’s Jess Brittain & Bryan Elsley"},"content":{"rendered":"

Skins\u00a0alums Jess Brittain and Bryan Elsley talk to <\/em>TV Drama\u00a0about <\/em>Clique, a new drama series centered on two childhood friends and their experiences in college.<\/em><\/p>\n

TV outlets around the world are looking for scripted fare that will attract those elusive young adults. The new six-part drama Clique<\/em>, a co-production of BBC Studios and Balloon Entertainment for BBC Three in association with all3media international, not only targets young viewers with its story set around a university in Edinburgh, but its mystery element also appeals to viewers of all ages.<\/p>\n

Created and written by Skins<\/em> alum Jess Brittain, Clique<\/em> focuses on two childhood friends, Georgia and Holly, and their experiences as freshmen at university. When asked about the genesis of the project, Brittain explains, \u201cIt was a personal project because it [came] out of my own time at university, having had a sort of weird and not stereotypically \"***Image***\"amazing uni experience. I was slightly thrown by that and perhaps a bit shell-shocked, since you expect to have the best years of your life at uni.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe intensity of that feeling had been hanging around in my mind for a while,\u201d she continues, \u201cand, once you are out of uni and start talking to people, it\u2019s quite common for them to say, Actually I didn\u2019t like it much either.\u201d To her dismay, when talking to younger people, Brittain realized that the university experience, so intense and pressurized, was getting even worse for undergraduates. \u201cIt felt like a great opportunity to unpack some of my personal stuff while still nodding to the change that had happened since I had graduated.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Clique<\/em>, Georgia gets entangled with a group of girls in a class led by professor Jude McDermid, who offers prestigious internships to top female students. Holly becomes suspicious of this group, especially since Georgia\u2019s behavior gets increasingly erratic. In an effort to help her friend, Holly follows Georgia into this circle of alpha girls and into a seductive world of parties \"***Image***\"attended by high-end businesspeople. The surprising twist in the series comes with a sudden death.<\/p>\n

Brittain examines feminism today and the compromises young women must make in the name of ambition. \u201cCertainly I wanted Clique<\/em> to be about a frustration with the strictness of third-wave feminism, and my peers and I felt very much like we needed to toe a very specific line and there was less and less space for controversial thinking. Clique<\/em> was a reaction against that in a very extreme TV-drama way.\u201d<\/p>\n

She adds, \u201cWith Jude, the character elicits a very strong response and a very diverse response as well, which I\u2019m very pleased about because she doesn\u2019t represent my views on feminism but she sparks quite a lively debate, and that is definitely what I really wanted to do with Clique<\/em>\u2014open up some conversation in a world that started to feel like you couldn\u2019t speak up openly about things [having] to do with being a woman.\u201d<\/p>\n

Casting these characters that Brittain saw so clearly in her head was a challenge. \u201cIt\u2019s tricky because it\u2019s sort of a process of grieving. You have this very specific image in your mind, and then you are presented with an incredibly talented person who is not what you\u2019re thinking of at all. But then they make the character their own, and it actually becomes something really great. We really struggled to cast Holly, the protagonist. We looked everywhere. It\u2019s a very [difficult] character because she\u2019s unfathomable and un-put-downable in a way, so it\u2019s quite difficult to coach actors who are auditioning for it on what specifically she is about. Then in the end, very strangely, the first block director\u2019s brother was at a wedding where [Synnove Karlsen] was singing. It was as random as that! He watched her and said, There is something very interesting about that girl. She had never acted before. She had just started Guildhall drama school in London so was very new to the world. She is incredibly talented, so that was serendipitous in a way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brittain is the sister of Jamie Brittain, who co-created Skins<\/em>, and daughter of Bryan Elsley, co-creator of Skins<\/em> and a founder of Balloon Entertainment. This year marks the tenth anniversary of the beloved youth drama Skins<\/em>. Elsley also serves as an executive producer on Clique<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Of doing another young-adult drama, Elsley says, \u201cI think it came about by chance. It was what Jess wanted to write, and I liked that it was a very pure and simple idea. At Balloon, we don\u2019t have a focus on youth programming or young adult, but we do have an appreciation of it. We like a well-made young-adult show because I think in many ways the young-adult arena is where a lot of the interesting television is being made. We didn\u2019t specifically set out to meet a YA brief; we just followed the grain of Jess\u2019s writing and that\u2019s where it ended up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Clique <\/em>debuted in the U.K. this spring, and there\u2019s a second season in development. Sold by all3media international, the series has also been picked up by, among other broadcasters, Pop in the U.S.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Skins alums talk about Clique, a new drama series centered on two childhood friends and their experiences in college.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":289,"featured_media":7933,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[69,70],"tags":[1958,1856,1957],"class_list":["post-7932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-profiles","category-top-stories","tag-bryan-elsley","tag-clique","tag-jess-brittain","pmpro-has-access"],"yoast_head":"\nClique's Jess Brittain & Bryan Elsley - TVDRAMA<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/from-skins-to-clique\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Clique's Jess Brittain & Bryan Elsley - 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