Jonathan van Ness, one fifth of the Queer Eye team, has just shared the release date of the beloved show's next season – and fans don't have long to wait. The eighth chapter of the feel-good reality TV show will premiere on January 24.
"& we’re back!" wrote Van Ness on Instagram, next to a photo of the Fab Five – Van Ness, Antoni Porowski, Bobby Berk, Karamo Brown and Tan France – posing enthusiastically.
"Y’all won’t want to miss the heroes this season… on another level," he added.
Predictably, fans have been sent into a frenzy by the news, with the majority of the comments on the post involving a combination of exclamation marks, heart-eyed emojis and clapping hands, and comments such as "yaaaaaayyy" and "CANT WAIT".
Season eight, which has been filmed in New Orleans, will be Berk's last season of the show. Explaining his decision on Instagram in November, Berk said: "The love that I have received from you all over the last 6 years has been absolutely surreal. You have tuned in and been dedicated fans and together we were able to share the healing powers of design. I learned from you all about kindness, love and acceptance and that has changed my life for the better.
"It's not been an easy decision to be at peace with, but a necessary one," he said. "Although my journey with Queer Eye is over, my journey with you is not. You will be seeing more of me very soon."
The current edition of Queer Eye launched on Netflix in 2018 and was immediately met with near-universal acclaim. The reality TV show, in which five gay specialists overhaul someone's life, has now picked up ten Emmy wins and many more nominations (and is currently in the running for six more). Each member of the delightful and passionate team focuses on different elements of the contestants' – or, as the show calls them, heroes' – lives, from fashion and lifestyle, to grooming, house design and diet. And, perhaps not surprisingly, their efforts genuinely transform people's lives.
"The beauty of this show, and what cuts through the thick, syrupy layers of you-go-girl affirmation (some literally spoken into a mirror, which is surprisingly effective), is its understanding and acknowledgement of how devastatingly easy it is for anyone to fall into one of life’s furrows," said the Standard in its five-star review of season seven. "And how small changes can make an unimaginable difference to our ability to get out of it."
A relaunch of Bravo's 2003 Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Netflix's deft combination of excellent casting, timing and pitch-perfect tone, meant that the show found a dedicated audience on the site, and made the Fab Five international stars. Queer Eye has been so successful that Brazilian and German adaptations have also been released by Netflix.
