'Skins': Series 6 Episode 5 review

Last year’s Mini-centric episode ended with the character encountering her mother (Clare Grogan, Red Dwarf’s original Kochanski) as they both drifted home after similarly wild nights out, leaving Mini looking for all the world like a repeat showing of her parent.

This year, those parallels are running ever deeper: Mini’s difficulty accepting regular male figures in her life, and her pregnancy are both definite shadows of mother Shelley.

Both women, however, have men who love them, and while Shelley is accepting of her feelings for her lover (Eric, played by the marvellous Justin Edwards), Mini is terrified of hers for farmboy Alo and so she attempts to rekindle her relationship with the ultimate lost man in her life, her father Gregory.

Gregory works at the excellently named “Dead Eye Management” where he and some tedious creatives are putting the finishing touches on a faux-hipster cellar dive called Boudoir (where the cocktails “taste like jizz” and the cloakroom offers a pharmaceutical treasure trove in some trendies’ pockets). Dead Eye Management also offers a potential partner in the shape of sensible, besuited Ryan (a sadly underdeveloped character, but ably portrayed by Adulthood’s Jacob Anderson).

Franky learns of Mini’s condition but is sworn to secrecy. “I’ve not even told myself”, she confesses during a currently rare conversation between the two. It’s clear, though, that Franky is actually very positive about the idea of Mini being a mummy.

Grace continues to haunt the gang, even if she doesn’t do it literally in this episode. In fact, the whole series so far has been shot through with the absence of her and Matty. Grace felt a little unexplored in the previous year’s run but without her there, it’s easy to see her as the nexus point that allowed a lot of these people to know each other and to leave them wondering if they still should now that she’s gone.

As for Gregory, the whole episode tells you that he’s going to leave but Alastair McKenzie plays him with just enough warmth that you wonder if he’s merely had a bad rap, and as such when he actually leaves it’s a genuine shock.

Brief returns from Rich and new boy Alex are welcome, giving us more of the main cast than we’ve had for a couple of weeks.

As we end on Mini’s emotional reaction to her ultrasound, is she experiencing the unconditional love for her unborn child that her own mother spoke of earlier in the episode, or is it sheer terror at her future prospects? Skins, as it so often does, makes sure that we aren’t entirely certain.