“I don’t like nostalgia unless it’s mine” – not my words, but those of eternal slapped arse Lou Reed. But I can see the logic in that idea, and I don’t think Lou and I are alone in thinking that.

Although nostalgia is a slightly reductive means of escaping reality, it’s also such a seductive tendency that we’re all guilty of from time to time. Yeah yeah, things ain’t what they used to be (and probably never was). But I guess that in constantly fetishising the past we forget what’s good about the present, at least not until it’s too late, like those douchebags who listened to The Beatles so much they only just discovered Chemical Brother’s first album (South East London, basically). Awkward.

So it’s not as if any of us need help in strapping on our rose-tinted frames, but the Guardian did something recently that had me rolling my eyes so much that they started looking backwards, straight to my teenage years when things were way better. And when I say ‘things’, I mean TV (especially Channel 4). In a recent Guide feature, they claimed that Skins is actually, y’know, really good ‘cos it deals with real ‘issues’ and pulls no punches. Who knew?  Here was me believing that its depiction of teenagers was so tediously depressing that it makes real life seem an ideal and the Daily Mail rational in its moralising.

Maybe I’m just being overly sentimental, but teen dramas were way better back when I were a lad. Here’s a run through of some of the finest. Note the absence of Dawson’s Creek because even now I have no idea what half of the words those 45-year-old teenagers used actually meant. I mean, when was the last time you used the word “juxtaposition” as a means to get into someone’s pants?

My So Called Life
Watching My So Called Life now is one big blast back to the years just after punk broke, the 90’s as they should be remembered; a nostalgic idyll of Jared Leto’s curtains, over-wrought post-grunge and all the plaid, Jansport backpacks and bad ear rings ever needed. And then, of course, Clare Danes (as Angela Chase) in the years before Hollywood, embodying geek chic before not-being-cool was cool. Kind of hot, kind of smart, kind of neurotic, Angela was the over-thinking boy’s ideal kind of girl to get angsty with (even when that boy was Jared Leto who rarely thought anything at all).

My So Called Life perfectly encapsulated teenage angst, not afraid to address the same issues that supposedly makes Skins so pioneering now, but did it ten years before Channel 4 kept jumping the shark again and again. And in Ricki there was a character that unashamedly and brashly introduced teenage gay issues into primetime TV when all I knew about the subject was that it was apparently something my Dad was desperate for me not to be. You could call that an education of sorts.

It’s easy to look back and cast those times as best, but My So Called Life is truly a calling card for Channel 4’s halcyon era, when that time between six and seven on a week night meant going from being a clueless kid to a savvier but ultimately still clueless (but you didn’t find that out until later) teenager, but with better taste and sharper one-liners. And you got to listen to Sonic Youth, Lemonheads, Afghan Whigs and Daniel Johnston while the action unfolded too. Another education, of sorts…

But no Season 2? Are you kidding me?! And to think that Hollyoaks will probably run until the end of time…



The Wonder Years
There’s no way this list could exist without including The Wonder Years; a programme based entirely on the premise of looking back on a more innocent time, childhood just about giving way to teenhood, then adulthood, and all the possibilities that contained.

Narrated by an older, wiser version of central teenage protagonist Kevin Arnold, it followed his high school years battling through love, friendship, sibling rivalry and parental pressures. Kevin was no hotshot though, just an everyman wanting to do the right thing, which often involved super-hot but attainable girls (the dream!) and generally being adorable.

And it’s that everyman element that made the show so appealing. Kevin was that most rational of heroes, wanting to rebel, but respecting authority enough to stay within the lines, except when football and girls and pride were at stake – only the best things in life mattered. He also got a boner for a cougar and nearly completed the deal when he was, like, 13 or something. Incredible memories. I’ve watched The Wonder Years so often that sometimes I confuse what happened to me and what happened to Kevin. I’m like one of those widows who call soap actors by their character names and build shrines to Dev from Coronation St.

After first being shown on Channel 4, The Wonder Years achieved the remarkable feat of making Channel 5 bearable for one long first year at University. Even then it was a nostalgic pleasure, teleporting me back to early Sunday evenings after dinner sat watching the Arnolds learn about love and life while my own older family members slept off gluttonous face feeding sessions. The Wonder Years was perfect because while I sat there surrounded by my own snoozing family, Kevin Arnold was falling in and out of love with Winnie Cooper, arguing with his BFF Paul, going on the best summer holidays and gently defying authority while Joe Cocker’s gravelly voice breezed through “With A Little Help From My Friends”. And beautifully, unlike Skins, it didn’t need shock tactics to communicate a universal message of hope and joy (I don’t think Skins has ever communicated that).


Heartbreak High
It’s hard for me to say anything good about Australians because I’m a human being with feelings who respects personal space. But there are always exceptions. There’s Nick Cave and Warren Ellis and The Saints and Round The Twist, and beyond the tedious nature of near all antipodean soaps, there was Heartbreak High. Acting as a placecard, its broadcasting on BBC 2 at 11:30am signaled many good things: school holidays, the time of day I chose to get out of bed, summer!

As an obsessive, I watched a rotating cast of characters for the whole of every summer for five years, vicariously living through their far cooler lives while I spent the entirety of my school holidays indoors.  For some undefined reason, these 16-year-olds were able to stay out all night, could afford to live in an amazing wooden shack without parental figures, and all had 15-year-old girlfriends that looked 21 (the dream then, now the other way around – joke, joke…). And in Drazic (what sort of fucking name is that!?) they had someone who was sassy enough to make rollerblading acceptable, which is as close to a miracle as I’ve ever experienced (incidentally, why is it that people who like xTreme sports are all cunts?).

In an upsetting post-script to the series, while researching (yep, research!) this I found out that the actor who played Drazic was recently involved in a horrendous car accident and needed 17 titanium plates to put his face back together. He still looks exactly the same. Hero.


Roseanne
Not strictly a teen drama, granted, but nevertheless Roseanne still communicates more spot-on ideas about growing up than near enough any other programme ever made. Roseanne Barr may have been the smart-talking matriarch who kicked the fuck out of everyone with her one-liners, and John Goodman the Dad everyone wished was their own, but it was the three kids who I remember best – Becky, Darlene (the human Daria, basically) and in particular, DJ.

And I single out DJ because he was the baby of the family who had to go through puberty on national TV while the show’s writers openly mocked that very fact. The poor kid had to act out a storyline about not doing his work in school because he kept getting hard-ons in class and couldn’t stand up to talk. His suffering not complete, they then did a storyline about him wanking in the bathroom for hours at a time while his whole family ripped him for it. I don’t think there’s a teenager in the world that can’t relate to those harrowing experiences.

The only problem with this show was that I could never watch it while my parents were in the room for fear of Roseanne using the words “masturbating” or “condom” or “period”. I was fucking terrified of those words.


Boy Meets World
I watched this religiously for what seemed like the entirety of my youth even though it did not contain one single funny joke, advocated celibacy and was about ‘doing the right thing’ instead of being a dick like every normal teenager. Boy Meets World was an unfunny comedy that you could watch forever, because somehow it was appealing to the good inside of you, like one big hug through puberty. And more than that, it propagated the inspirational idea that even if you looked like Corey Matthews you could get a Topanga Lawrence, which is a complete lie obviously, but everyone needs some hope to cling to – I’m still clinging now.