Read

In summer 2014, HBO Canada debuted Sensitive Skin (2014 -), a Canadian adaptation of a British show (2005) of the same name. Starring Kim Cattrall and co-creator Don McKellar, the show follows middle-aged Al (McKellar), a newspaper columnist, and Davina (Cattrall), an art gallery manager and former model, who have been empty nesters for a while and are not taking it lying down. Through understated 30-minute episodes, the show relates Al’s and Davina’s reactions to incidents typical for an urban, affluent married couple, while telling the more significant story of the pair’s dissatisfaction with life and their anxiety about its imminent conclusion. Through a muted score, dialogue-heavy episodes and the use of experienced actors, the show meets a particular demand for material about and for older viewers. Sensitive Skin mines the fascinating experience of the later stages of self-discovery, the challenge of remaining true to one’s former self, and living a meaningful life as one’s relevance in the world diminishes.

One of the ways that the show is designed specifically for older viewers is its dialogue-rich episodes. Although each segment centers around a specific story, the plot content of each episode is generally insignificant, and the scenes are mostly comprised of conversation. In Season 1, Episode 4, “The Mummy,” Davina’s sister admits that her husband quit the piano lessons the couple got him for Christmas. Later, at home, Davina rants about the waste of the gift and vows that Al will finish the lessons himself. The fact that the show’s writers devote a full five minutes to these two conversations exhibits a contrast between this style of storytelling and a faster-paced mainstream habit of using minimal dialogue to communicate set-up or background exposition as quickly as possible. Sensitve Skin’s slow-to-unwind plot is the exception to the rule in today’s digitally amplified, social-media-influenced entertainment space. By giving respect to the beauty of person-to-person conversation, Sensitive Skin points towards a significant divide between how older people communicate and how people born after the computer, the internet and the smartphone connect.

In “The Mummy,” the characters involved have surplus leisure time, and their interactions are not mediated by digital communication. The piano teacher, while coming over to their house and waiting for Al, meets Davina. Later, the piano teacher drops by unannounced to speak to Davina. For younger audiences, these events have the potential to appear unusual, since the idea of coming by someone’s home without calling or texting is almost rude. Hence, the divide between the younger generation is exposed through this now “novel” encounter.

The actors cast in the show are necessarily older and experienced in talkier films and shows. McKellar himself wrote screenplays for The Red Violin (1999) and Blindness (2008), and Kim Cattrall has been involved in more dialogue-heavy projects including Sex & the City (1998-2004) and Bonfire of the Vanities (1990). Both actors exploit the pause and the subtle glance, eye roll, or lilt of voice as tools to communicate — between the lines— annoyance, piqued interest, frustration, defeat, acceptance and the other subdued emotions one experiences in the midst of a long history with a spouse, a relative, a child, a coworker. These emotions are perhaps recognized and articulated with more nuance older people, as they are better understood with experience.

Not only is the acting subtle, but it is further highlighted by the show’s sparse use of underscoring. Aside from a brief musical interlude at the opening credits and some diegetic music (as when Davina goes to a play, where—ostensibly—there might be piano accompaniment), there is no violin music to tell us to feel sad or pumping beat signaling to be excited for a climax, as is the norm on more mainstream shows that target younger viewers (Jane the Virgin, for instance, features music underneath the dialogue of almost every scene). Sensitive Skin unfolds deliberately yet seemingly undramatically until, without our expecting it, a brief and glorious joke or plot twist occurs, mirroring what life feels like as one grows older and more experienced: frequently unsurprising, until, out of the blue once again, one is surprised by something.

Through the setting, casting, and writing of Sensitive Skin, the audience takes part in the under-depicted experience of aging in North America and what the American dream of material success and upward mobility feels like in the later years of life. The most significant aspects of the show prove to be precisely what the millenials seem to be missing: quiet, just the right amount of boredom and an earned laugh.