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Queer as Folk (American TV series)

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Queer as Folk is an American television series produced by Showtime, which is based on the British series of the same name created by Russell T. Davies. This US version of Queer as Folk uses various directors (chiefly American and Canadian), and has a story by Ron Cowen and Daniel Lipman and Del Shores.

Cast


Season discography

This show ran for 5 seasons:

  • Season I: 22 episodes (Dec 3, 2000 - Jun 24, 2001)
  • Season II: 20 episodes (Jan 6 - Jun 16, 2002)
  • Season III: 14 episodes (Mar 2 - Jun 22, 2003)
  • Season IV: 14 episodes (Apr 18 - Jul 18, 2004)
  • Season V: 13 episodes (May 22, 2005 - Jul 31, 2005)

This Showtime original drama aired in the U.S. at 10pm ET/PT on Sunday nights. It is broadcast in Canada on Showcase on Mondays at 10pm ET/PT.

Seasons 3, 4 and 5 are broadcast in HDTV.

General description

This series is principally the story of five gay men: Brian, Michael, Justin, Emmett, Ted, and a lesbian couple, Lindsay and Melanie.

The show is noted for its relative frankness in its depiction of gay lifestyles and sex. A disclaimer, " Queer as Folk is a celebration of the lives and passions of a group of gay friends. It is not meant to reflect all of gay society" appears before each episode.

The series won the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Drama Series, 2001.

Character descriptions, plot details

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Brian is a handsome, 29-year old advertising executive with a voracious sexual appetite. Raised by a carousing, alcoholic father and a devoutly Catholic mother, he lives a self-contained/centered lifestyle and prefers the honesty of lust to the dishonesty (and vulnerability) he perceives in love and romance. Michael, also just turning 30, is his best friend since childhood, and begins the series working at a retail store called The Big Q. Ted, 33, is an accountant with low self-esteem, and Emmett is a flamboyant Southern queen who works in trendy clothing shop "Torso" on Liberty Avenue.

The first episode finds the four friends ending a night at an idealized gay oasis called Babylon. Jaded Brian picks up and deflowers the sensitive and artistic Justin, a 17-year-old prep school student who becomes far more than a one-night stand. Brian also becomes a father that night, having sired a child for college friend Lindsey, an art teacher, and her partner Melanie, an attorney who loathes Brian as much as Lindsey loves him. Debbie is Michael's mother and a committed gay-rights activist. She waits tables at the Liberty Diner, which serves as a haven for the group of friends. Her brother Vic has been critically ill with AIDS and lives with her.

The characters become enmeshed and entangled in various ways over the course of five years. Michael's seemingly unrequited love for Brian fuels the story, which he occasionally narrates in voice-over. Justin's coming out and budding relationship with Brian has unexpected effects on Brian's and Michael's lives. Justin confides in straight high-school friend Daphne, while struggling to deal with homophobic classmates and his dismayed parents, Craig and Jennifer. Later in the series Justin & Michael co-create sexually-explicit underground comic "Rage", featuring a "Gay Crusader" superhero inspired by Brian.

Brian's son Gus, being raised by Lindsay and Melanie, becomes the focus of several episodes as issues of parental rights come to the fore. Ted is Melanie's accountant and once harbored a longstanding crush on Michael. He and Emmett begin as best friends, but briefly become lovers later in the series. Their relationship ends as Ted, unemployed and with a criminal record earned from running a porn website, becomes addicted to crystal meth. In the fourth season, Brian, who has lost his job assisting Justin in opposing an anti-gay political client, starts his own agency. Michael marries an HIV-positive partner and the couple adopts a son, Hunter, who is also HIV-positive as a result of his experiences as a child prostitute.

Melanie and Lindsay's relationship is tumultuous and controversial. Each cheats on the other at various points in the series, and they indulge in a threesome shortly after they marry in an unlawful ceremony. Melanie is impregnated by Michael through artificial insemination in the fourth season, so that the best friends are now co-stepfathers.

In the fifth and final season, the boys have become men and the series goes out with a bang. Brian and Justin resolve their relationship, as do Deb & Horvath, and the lesbians; Emmett becomes a Queer-Eye type TV presenter; Ted confronts his midlife crisis head-on and the Novotny-Bruckner family perseveres. All will survive, regardless of the U.S sociopolitical climate in 2005.

Cultural implications

The American version of Queer as Folk quickly became the number one show on the Showtime roster. The network's initial marketing of the show was primarily targeted at gay male audiences, yet a sizeable segment of the viewership turned out to be straight women.

Groundbreaking scenes abounded in Queer as Folk, beginning with the first episode, containing the first explicit sex scene between two men shown on American television. Despite the frank portrayals of drug use and casual sex in the gay club scene, the expected conservative uproar never materialized.

Initially, most of the actors kept their real-life sexual orientations ambiguous in the press so as not to detract from their characters, causing much speculation among the viewing audience. Since that time, Randy Harrison, Peter Paige, Robert Gant and Jack Weatherall have stated that they are gay, while the remainder of the cast have stated they are straight or have avoided public discussion of their orientation.

Controversial storylines which have been explored in Queer As Folk have included: coming out, same-sex marriage, recreational drug use and abuse (cocaine, methamphetamine, ecstasy, GHB, ketamine, cannabis); gay adoption, artificial insemination; vigilantism; gay-bashing; safe sex, HIV-positive status, child prostitution; actively gay Catholic priests; discrimination in the workplace based on sexual orientation, the internet pornography industry and HIV-negative individuals who actively seek to become HIV-positive.

The series is set in the city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which it depicts with a good deal of creative license. Pittsburgh was chosen as the closest parallel to the U.K. series' industrial setting of Manchester, England. However, since Pittsburgh does not have a large gay district like San Francisco or Montreal, nearly all of the location filming takes place in and around the Church and Wellesley area of Toronto. Woody's, the central bar in this fantasy Pittsburgh, is the name of a leading gay bar in Toronto, whose real exterior is shot with only minor disguise. (In a Season 4 episode in which several characters travelled to Toronto, the real Woody's was dubbed "Moosie's".) While the most popular gay club in Pittsburgh is located on the real-life Liberty Avenue, it is not the gay mecca that is portrayed on the show.

The series has, at times, made humorous reference to its image in the gay community. A few episodes featured show-within-a-show Gay as Blazes, a dull, politically-correct drama which Brian particularly disagreed with, and which was eventually cancelled.


Criticisms of Queer as Folk

Queer as Folk has been strongly criticized by some in the gay community for what they feel is an unrealistic portrayal of actual gay relationships and/or gay life. The producers of the show have stressed from the beginning both in a written statement that opened the show (Seasons 1-3) and in the press, that they were not attempting to make any representations or generalizations. However, many in the gay press have nevertheless, charged that this would be the effect on many viewers--desired or not. A few gay columnists have therefore taken issue with, what they feel, are unrealistic portrayals as well as "hidden agendas" within the shows content. Examples used have been the lack of people of color on the show, the lack of "average-joe" type characters at bars/clubs portrayed, the overabundance of public sex at the bars, (illegal in most places in the US; including Pennsylvania) and finally, the villefication of certain aspects of gay males lives, (such as bareback sex), yet complacent treatment of hard-drug use and infidelity which, as critics have charged, is a taking of sides on controversial issues within the queer community and a lack of true non-representation.

Still, others claim that while the depiction of drugs and sex is realistic, it's portrayal is a counter-productive airing of "dirty laundry" to the larger community, to whom the gay community is appealing for legal protection of their civil rights.

Others in the gay community have praised it for its reflection of previously-taboo aspects of their lives--realistic or romanticized. On balance the show is seen in a generally positive light for its contribution to gay media exposure.


See also

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