Don't Let Our Youth Go To Waste:In My Skin S2.

The first series of In My Skin was very good. The second series was exceptional. 

In its writing, and its performances, In My Skin S2 (BBC3/iPlayer, created and written by Kayleigh Llewellyn and directed by Molly Manners), perfectly captures that sense of freedom, as well as anger and confusion, we feel in that awkward space between childhood and adulthood. Scenes are shot through with intense feelings of discovery and abandon as much as they are with frustration and disappointment.

The pain, the excitement, the joy, and the uncertainty of youth, of finding - and maybe losing - first love, of outgrowing your friends, family, and home town are all portrayed so achingly well that I had to wipe tears, both tears of joy and tears of sadness, from my eyes on several occasions.

We begin with, now head girl Bethan (Gabrielle Creevy) still mucking about on shopping trolleys and getting drunk on vodka with her besties Travis (James Wilbraham) and Lydia (Poppy Lee Friar) but she's also developing a serious crush on the newly arrived at school, from Manchester, Cam (Rebekah Murrell) and it's one, unlike her previous dalliance with Poppy (Zadeiah Campbell-Davies), that appears to be mutually reciprocated.

Cam can drive, she even owns her own car, she can speak French, and she's got interesting taste in music (she introduced me to the likes of Biig Piig and GIRLI - in a series in which, otherwise, I only recognised the brilliant Khruangbin and Cliff Richard's Devil Woman) but, more than that, she is intelligent. Both academically and emotionally. She offers Bethan a chance to be honest about herself and we viewers find ourselves desperately hoping that she takes it, that she doesn't waste this chance of love.

Even Bethan's difficult, and oft lied about, home life appears to have improved - a little at least - at first. Her bipolar mum Katrina (Jo Hartley) seems in a good place, she's got a job she likes cleaning at the bingo hall and has made new friends, but her drunken abusive waste of space excuse for a father Dilwyn (Rhodri Meilir) has resolutely refused to mend his ways and, if anything, has become even more aggressive.

Nana Margie (Di Botcher), as well as the teachers Ms Morgan (Alexandria Riley) and Ms Blocker (Laura Checkley), are still batting for Bethan and are there to hear her, to hug her, or to give her a kick up the arse when needed. Which, with school bully Stan Priest (Aled ap Steffan) still determined to make everyone's life a misery, and enjoying a fling with Lydia, and Poppy's interest in Bethan rekindled (seemingly due to jealousy about Cam), is often.

Poppy's attention towards Bethan appears both conditional and fleeting, it's something she only acts on when it suits her, but Bethan's relationship with Cam feels much more balanced and much more serious. It's played out sweetly, tenderly and full of both awkward and silly moments - much as teenage romances always have and always will be played out.

When they're out, in a popular dogging spot, Bethan spots something quite remarkable that will, not for the last time in this series, change the direction of her life and, specifically, alter the relationship she has with both her parents. As the kids of the first series become young adults in the second, we see them become aware of not just the disappointments of adult life but the societal expectations heaped on them and the crushing routine of daily existence.

Something that is reflected in repeated scenes of tooth brushing, waking up and getting out of bed to go to work, and scraping leftovers off a plate into a bin. Bringing light to these dismal days is Katrina's work 'friend' Perry (Steffan Rhodri) and the love he shows to his daughter Ffion (Olivia Southgate) who has Down Syndrome. It stands in stark contrast to Dilwyn and the way he treats Katrina and Bethan.

The scenes between Bethan and Ffion are some of the most heartwarming of the entire series but then so are those between Bethan and Cam and between Bethan and Katrina. The latter, complex yet loving, relationship feels pivotal to everything that happens in In My Skin and it's no understatement to say I was willing it to end well for both of them.

Of course there are still rude jokes and most of the best lines go to Stan Priest who boasts about having a "fat sweaty frankfurther" of a dick, asks his teacher if she's "on the blob" and, on a school trip where the students are listing what alcohol they've secreted where, claims he has a "little bottle of limoncello up his anus". Lydia, not to be outdone, calls Poppy "cuntchops" and poor, bullied, Lorraine (Georgia Furlong) not only gets to be the butt of the jokes but gets to make them too.

The comedy doesn't dominate the drama and nor does it detract from it. It simply seems part of it, as anyone who's ever been to a standard state secondary school will remember well. The quotidian settings of bingo halls and burgers and chips eaten out of polystyrene boxes in windswept parks mix well with school debates about eugenics and To Kill A Mockingbird to complete a very realistic picture of growing up in Britain.

Or, in this case, South Wales specifically. In My Skin was compelling, and emotional, viewing from start to finish and in Gabrielle Creecy we have surely found a star in the making. In her faraway, forlorn yet steely with resolve, eyes alone, Creevy brilliantly plays Bethan as a girl in danger of having her youth stolen from her by the dysfunction that both surrounds her and has been instilled within her. As well as a girl, young woman, who is determined to fight, and win, for her future. You know that, should she succeed or not, in the end there will be one absolute certainty. You'll feel her joy and pain almost as much as she does.