ONTD

Fantasy series The Fades joins Misfits, Skins and Being Human in demonstrating that youth drama is among the most bold and innovative on TV



"It was about a boy who investigates ghosts that live in pipes with his Grandad," says writer Jack Thorne of the very early drafts of his BBC3 fantasy series The Fades. "It was shit". Fortunately the show that the Skins and This is England scriptwriter did eventually come to complete – the first episode of which aired last night – is weird, off the wall, annoying in places and with a bit too much wisecracking. But far from shit.

Instead The Fades is about a suburban schoolboy called Paul (Iain De Caestecker) who cannot help noticing that the dead are far from dead and hang around his local streets and shopping centres. Paul's world soon becomes beset by the frenetic attentions of Neil (Johnny Harris) – an avenging warrior against those rather cross undead who want to kill people. Neil looks as if he's walked in off the set of Mad Max and his sidekick is an arse-kicking woman vicar played by Daniela Nardini. Did I say it was a bit out there?

Thorne's drama seems unafraid of tackling big ideas. With its godless dystopia where death and the afterlife are arbitrarily handed out to hapless humanity, the show doesn't dodge big questions about life.

But the quality of The Fades doesn't put it in a category of its own when it comes to drama aimed at a younger audience. It is difficult not to watch BBC3 and E4 and think channels which target the under 35s are emerging as among the best places for boldness and innovation in UK TV drama.

Not all the channels' output is brilliant. But E4's Misfits won the 2010 Bafta for best TV series as well as the 2010 Broadcast award for best new series. Skins, also a multiple award winner, won the 2008 Bafta best drama award and a best drama Rose d'Or the same year. BBC3's Being Human, meanwhile, has won two Bafta best drama nominations.

Kate Harwood, BBC controller of series and serials – who is also looking after some of the BBC's more conventional offerings for this year such as period dramas Great Expectations and The Mystery of Edwin Drood – says youth drama is on a high. "You have an audience very open to great questions, great complexity and in the case of dramas like The Fades a whole new mythology. They are very invigorating to make," she says.

Misfits executive producer Petra Fried agrees. For her, dramas such as Being Human and Misfits have to be inventive because of the audience. "Many of the terrestrial channels don't want to scare off their audiences – but with smaller channels you need and want to challenge them. E4 and BBC3 audiences want to be poked and not stroked."

Dramas aimed at younger viewers don't always have high concept Fried says – when Skins started it was basically a relationship drama about young people, but it made waves because no one had really done anything like it before. "After that you had to be different – and luckily we were developing Misfits at a time when Channel 4 were looking for a teen take on genre."

But the low budgets can also help, she notes. "You have to be constantly surprising and that is often achieved by budgetary restraints. You are forced to think of inventive ways of doing stuff." For Fried, the unpopulated, barren look of Misfits was partly a creative decision but was because the production budget couldn't afford many extras.

Ironically, Thorne, who has made most of his work for BBC3 and E4, is less sure about generalisations regarding drama aimed at younger viewers. "I just make the best things I can really," he says. "I am 32 and I think one of the best dramas on TV in the past 20 years is Battlestar Galactica and that wouldn't describe itself as a young people's show, it would say it was sci-fi. I would also say that the most ambitious drama last year was probably Five Daughters."

For Thorne, fantasy is enjoyed by all ages and it is the genre which allows these big questions to be asked and for writers to be able to "push the boat out".

"I don't sit there thinking that I am writing for a youth audience. In fact I reference a lot of films from the 1980s in The Fades, films such as A Nightmare on Elm Street and Blade Runner, and I don't worry the audience are too young to get them. It's best not to judge an audience before they get a chance to enjoy it."

This may be special pleading and modesty from a man who has quite a following and quite a talent. It may also be the case that there is a lot of UK drama – from Downton to The Shadow Line – that is on fine form at the moment. But there remains an exuberance and a wish to experiment with drama on E4 and BBC3 which is enormously encouraging and a cause for great optimism.

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What did those who watch it think? I found it to be a good balance of creepy + funny.