The Bristol backdrop is unmistakable and the teenagers being portrayed in the latest series of Skins are just as recognisable.

But for the young people at whom this third series is aimed, the portrayal is far from the truth.

Skins which hits our TV screens again on Thursday night is the drama series set in Bristol and starring tearaway teenagers who drink, take drugs, sleep around and host wild parties.

It's a winning formula that attracted almost a million viewers to the first two series.

The opening scene in the latest series sees a skateboarder hurtling down Park Street, swerving past a bus and knocking over a policeman by the Folk House before coming to a stop, sparks flying as his board scrapes the tarmac near College Green.

Next, the driver of a car loses control after hitting a bicycle lying in the road and crashes into a bollard by the entrance to the Council House.

The angry driver gets out of the car while his surly daughter sits in the passenger seat smoking a cigarette and staring provocatively at the skateboarder, now sitting drinking beer and smoking marijuana with a couple of mates at 8am in the morning.

Unlike Casualty, which is also filmed in Bristol but set in fictional Holby, Bristol is often mentioned in Skins, which films in locations throughout the city. In the opening credits, the Downs, Floating Harbour and Trenchard Street car park can all be spotted.

The third series begins on E4 this evening, but students from John Cabot Academy in Kingswood, where some of the latest series was filmed, were able to watch a special screening of the episode earlier this week.

The six students, aged from 16 to 18, are the show's target audience, but although there were several laughs during the 45-minute episode, most of the viewers had a few reservations about the series.

Their main complaint was that since Skins first appeared on our screens in 2007, it has gone from being a realistic portrayal of teenage life to a crass comedy trading on cheap laughs and unbelievable storylines.

While 18-year-old Megan Dilloway, from Hanham, said that it was amusing to see her school locker on the television, she added that life for her and her friends was very unlike that of the characters in Skins.

"I liked the first series, that was wicked," Megan said. "But I didn't like the second one so much. The first series was very true about teenagers, but then they started over-exaggerating things and it got a bit unbelievable.

"This series looks like it's going to be like that again. Getting drunk and smoking a spliff at eight o'clock in the morning? It's just ridiculous."

For James Hopkins, 18, from Kingswood, the first episode was "all right, but the characters did not seem likeable". He added: "If people do drugs at our age, it's a rarity, but everyone seems to do it in Skins. I think a lot of people could get ideas and that's quite silly."

So-called 'Skins parties' have featured prominently in the media, with parents' houses getting trashed as teenagers run riot after posting details of the party on social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace.

They named after similar events on the show – and the John Cabot students said what they showed was sometimes accurate.

They described one party where a house in Downend was "trashed", with holes being left in walls, curtains pulled down, vomit staining the floors and alcohol being poured in the fish tank, killing the fish.

"We just get drunk and have fun," said 17-year-old Eleanor Fox from Downend. "But in Skins they do it to the extreme. These things do happen, but the things you see in one party on Skins would only happen altogether in seven or eight of our parties."

The only character returning in series three of Skins is Effy Stonem, sister of Tony who was the lead in series one and two. Effy is the surly daughter sitting in the passenger seat in the first scene of tonight's episode.

She wears a tiny dress, fishnet tights and lots of jewellery, sharing most of the characters' tendency to dress to impress.

In episode one, we see a group of girls applying makeup in the corridor, a scene that provoked discussion from the John Cabot pupils.

"That would never happen here," said Nikita Patel, 16, from St George. "Having lots of expensive clothes doesn't make you cool. I never dress up, I can't be bothered. I prefer having five minutes more in bed."

Her friend Priya Barot, 16, from Kingswood, agreed: "It's about your personality, not about the clothes you wear. Skins makes all teenagers look like fashion-obsessed drug addicts and alcoholics, but we're not like that."