trudy is the only character who act well

I thought generally the actor/actresses were pretty good overall, apart from a swift few.

But I agree that Toni was head and shoulders the best of the lot.

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I thought Jack's acting was really, really good from the beginning. I remember watching the show when I was younger and thinking wow, none of these people are believable, except Michael Wesley-Smith, who seemed to have a better grasp of his full character from the beginning. I also thought Lex was really good.

Well, of course it's easier to show your acting range with a character development as complex as Trudy's. If the others' perfomances might seem dull or flat at times, it's because the script was.

I don't think there were any really bad actors on the show, the casting did a great job. They all had their moments, good and bad (I think I could give you a bad scene for any of the cast, which is normal for a kids tv show, shot this fast).

The different characters and storylines made it hard for an actor to show their best, or made it easy to shine. Take Amber for example. I agree that Beth is a fine actress but she had a good role to start with. Especially in the beginning her scenes were often connected with the spirit of "having to stay", "holding something together", "defending her opinion" etc. This sort of storyline was convenient for her, in a new environment with a group of new people to work and live with - the insecurities she might have had added to the role of Amber. She sort of had a head start there and could develop more freely later on.
Also, people who could hide behind characters that were completely not their own, like Meryl and Caleb, benefitted from this as they could experiment and feel like they "over-act" but result in the character to be believeable. Others, like the Salene character, are a lot more complex, so harder to play. She behaved really weird a lot of the time and seemed to be driven mostly out of fear and insecurity, but still had enough anger inside of her to snap at people from time to time. Now how else would you play that? I only took those as random examples but I think it can be applied to all of them.

When talking about the kids, I think we should just omit them in terms of acting ability. Re-watching some of the Ned/Andy/Tally scenes (this trio really bugged me back then) made me think that probably, the acting wasn't bad but it was a) the characters (they were meant to be annoying) and b) they were kids! You have to think of the situation on set, there are children and teenagers, which are very different to work with as a director. I imagine it's near impossible to find a director who can instruct the two groups with the same perfection. Even if it were, The Tribe was filmed on a tight schedule. The kids were mainly just sidekicks, serving as comic reliefs and to provide the sense of "there are no adults left". When I was watching Series one yesterday, I found myself sighing and hitting fast foward when the whole Cloe and Bluebell part started because I simply find it annoying. But what else could they have done, the Mallrats could hardly have been a tribe of people aged 14+. "We're trying to build a new world, fighting for justice and equality but would the stupid brats please stay out"? And of course, the show was aimed not only at people in their teens but older children as well so somebody needed to represent those viewers. The acting got better as they matured (KC, the last time we see him, made me really root for him although I found him to be more or less useless before), so I really think it's the directing that was flawed there.

Also coming back to characters many dislike, like Ned or Gel. Those were very one-dimensional and not much could be done with the script on the actors' part. They were meant to annoy us, which they did, so I think they succeeded in their jobs.

Yeah, yeah I know... Blah blah but come on, it's been a while, let me ramble on a bit =D

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Its a shame Trudy was such an infuriating character because the actress was very good most of the time.