The Lipster

Tonight, BBC Three screens an hour-long pilot called The Things I Haven't Told You. It's a teen drama/thriller/mystery that plays out like My So-Called Life, relocated to Kent and directed by David Lynch. It's one of six pilots commissioned by the channel that may or may not go into full production, depending on the audience response. Given the cliffhanger it ends on, it'd better get picked up.

The Things I Haven't Told You packs in every teen show essential - school, bullying, relationships, parties, popularity, drugs, drink, family, best friends - and makes it work for an adult audience, because it's bound in a swift and smart narrative. Skins, with its 10pm slot, has done the same, as has ITV2's soon to be massive US import Gossip Girl, which airs at 9pm. We're not in pre-Neighbours, post-Newsround teatime territory any more, Toto. Teen TV is all grown up and playing by the rules of adult dramas. That's a good thing for young guns and telly heads alike, because it simply means that instead of patronising educational "entertainment", we're in the market for damn good shows.

I blame My So-Called Life. So resonant that it's still a major pop-cultural reference point (see Juno's nod to an invisible "Tino"), the show barely lasted a season, but what a season it had. Back in 1994, sleeping around, gay best friends, ecstasy overdoses, underage boozing, underage sexing and The Cranberries were not typical teen fodder, but My So-Called Life changed the rules. It made youth drama serious, thought-out and relevant, and, most of all, it didn't have an overt moral agenda.

With only a Dawson's Creek-shaped blip (drink alcohol and you will die!), American teen shows got sharper and faster: we're talking Freaks & Geeks, The OC, Dead Like Me and Veronica Mars, to name a handful of the very best. And while the UK has been slow to catch up, we're getting there. Realistically, Hollyoaks is the best soap on the box (fight you if you disagree). Sugar Rush blazed a trail with its fast-talking sex and crime capers. Skins is well into its second series and is now regular broadsheet fodder. Teen television has never been so good. And we don't even have to suffer the awkwardness of adolescence to appreciate it.

The Things I Haven't Told You, tonight (Monday 17th March), BBC Three, 9pm