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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 (2000 - 2001)
  • Season II: 20 episodes (2001 - 2002)
  • Season III: 14 episodes (2002 - 2003)
  • Season IV: 14 episodes (2003 - 2004)
  • Season V: 13 episodes (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+ partner and the couple adopts a son, Hunter, who is also HIV+ 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.

Cultural implications

The American version of Queer as Folk quickly became the number one show on the Showtime roster, in spite of the network's marketing of the show primarily to gay audiences, while half of the audience turned out to be straight females.

Groundbreaking scenes abound in Queer as Folk, beginning with the first episode, which had the first explicit sex scene between two men shown on American television. Despite its frank portrayal of drugs and sex in the gay club scene, the expected conservative uproar never materialized.

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. Some say that the depiction of drugs and sex are realistic, but 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. On the production side the acting of some of the main actors has been criticised as wooden at times which severly detracts from any quality to the writing.

In the UK it has been naturally compared to the original version and the general consensus is that it may have been better to have created original characters as it is very distracting to see much loved characters and relationships develop in totally different circumstances- it will always seem an imitation of the original. The reason the UK version only lasted 10 episodes was because the writer and producers felt that the story had reached its conclusion and that there was nothing more to tell. It would have been unblieveable that the main characters in their 30s would have anything in common with a teenager and so the relationship would disintegrate. QAF UK was a stand alone story that was free of concerns about "represention" of the gay community, while the US version has basically covered every topic and demographic of gay life at some point in its run (see below), as if it were attempting to produce the definitive gay drama. QAF USA has made the decision that the original story can be continued by expanding ancillary characters to have bigger roles. While this has been successful in the case of the character Emmet, it has caused the show to resemble a prime time soap opera rather than a drama like "Six Feet Under," which deals with gay characters and themes in a more realistic fashion.

Others in the gay community have praised it for its reflection of previously-taboo aspects of their lives. On balance the show is seen in a generally positive light especially in its depiction of lesbians, and is shown as transmitted in gay bars across the US to hoots and hollers at all the in-jokes and references; among its straight fans, it's seen as an addictively-enjoyable series, with characters that are felt strongly about , and plotlines that are eagerly anticipated.

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+.

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 reference to its image in the gay community, with a popular TV series of some of the characters - Gay as Blazes, which purports to show a gay lifestyle which Emmett particularly disagrees with, and which at times faces cancellation.

See also

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