As If (partially lost British teen drama series; 2001-2004)

Title card.

Status: Partially Lost

As If was a British teen drama series that aired on the premium channel E4 as one of its flagship programmes, and later aired on Channel 4. The show consisted of 76 episodes across 4 seasons, airing from January 2001 to July 2004.

The show concerned a group of 6 London youngsters navigating sex, drugs, and interpersonal relationships. It was noted for its to-camera narration; frenetic cinematography; and considerable usage of licensed popular music. As If maintained a cult following, and was critically acclaimed, with retrospectives highlighting the show's influence on later successful teen shows such as Skins and Sugar Rush.

Availability

As If never received any release on home media. This is believed to be due to the likely-extreme cost of licensing the show's considerable soundtrack for home release. However, unlike other Channel 4 shows that used licensed music such as Sugar Rush, the producers of As If refused to replace the soundtrack with royalty-free stock music for home media, instead preventing any release of the show at all. Speaking in a ten-years-on retrospective, many of the show's stars corroborated this reasoning for the show's lack of rerelease.

"Given the choice between no music so we can release the DVD, I'd choose the music," said Caroline Chikezie (Sasha). "They used to say the music was the seventh cast member, it was so important. It just took it to a whole new level. I guess it's worth not having a DVD release just to keep the music."

Despite the lack of official release, As If partially survived through third-party bootleg recordings of its original broadcast.

For many years, the show was accessible on YouTubevia the channel of user courchevalskier, who uploaded every episode of the show to their channel in 2008 (albeit separated into 3 parts per episode due to contemporary length restrictions) . However, in the years since, many parts of many of these episodes have been stricken from YouTube due to music copyright claims, leading to large chunks of the series being entirely inaccessible via this channel. Until early 2024, this channel was the only presence of As If on video streaming platforms.

2024 Partial Resurfacing

Across January and February 2024, after over 23 years of the show having no official release, the English branch of Sony Pictures India made the first three seasons of the show available on their YouTube channel, with the original soundtrack seemingly intact. It is unknown how, if at all, the licensing restrictions were overcome. However, the channel is region locked exclusively to India, leading to the show continuing to be extremely difficult to access.

The Remaining Missing Episodes

Season 2, episode 4 ('Alex's POV'), an episode that was missing from the bootleg archives of the show, now exists via the Sony Pictures India uploads. However, due to the seeming absence of Season 4 from the upload, episode 15 of that season ('Rob's POV') is not known to exist online in its complete form. Sections of this episode are available online via courchevalskier on YouTube, but the second part of the episode has been stricken from the channel. It is unknown if bootleg recordings of the full episode survive, and to date, this episode does not seem to exist in full online.