The word “groundbreaking” gets chucked about a lot, but there’s no more accurate way to describe Russell T Davies’ seismically influential gay drama Queer as Folk. First airing in the late Nineties, against the backdrop of Section 28 and the Aids crisis, the show was a watershed moment for gay representation in the mainstream media, and followed best mates Vince and Stuart as they went out on the pull on Manchester’s Canal Street. It turns 25 today, and can be streamed on All4.
And far from gently easing in its mainstream audience, episode one kicked off with a bang (well, quite a few bangs in quick succession, to be precise). Shortly after copping off with a stranger in a phone box, Stuart seduces Nathan, a teenager who has run away to the city’s gay district. Against a soundtrack of sleazy, pulsing house music, Stuart cheerily takes him home and introduces him to the art of rimming.
Before the first ad break, we’re rapidly introduced to Romey and Lisa, a lesbian couple who have just had a baby with Stuart’s help. Cue plenty of pearl-clutching, Beck’s beer pulling sponsorship of the show and a record-breaking 160 complaints to the Independent Television Commission.
“The House of Lords was debating the age of consent at the time,” Russell T Davies has recalled, discussing the climate in which the show aired, “which was eventually equalised to 16 for gay couples. I don’t for a second think that Queer as Folk was responsible, but it was part of a cultural moment. Sometimes you’re there at the right time.”
Representation of queer people on television was pretty dire in the Nineties; a 1994 study found that just 0.03 per cent of characters on-screen were homosexual (compare that to 3.2 per cent, the generally accepted current percentage of lesbian, gay and bisexual people in the UK population). Until then, queer people had largely been consigned to niche programmes or documentaries that treated the community as a curiosity, with titles like Consenting Adults 1: The Men (1967) or The Important Thing is Love (1971).
Mostly, it was soap operas that paved the way. Brookside introduced the first openly gay soap character in 1985, while EastEnders aired TV’s first on-screen gay kiss four years later. Still, storylines for gay characters were both thin on the ground and often steeped in shame.
This is where Queer as Folk wildly differed. Airing at a time when more than half of the UK population thought that same-sex relationships were either “always” or “mostly wrong” (according to a British Social Attitudes survey) it refused to pander to a widely homophobic climate. Instead it was a joyful show, at once shocking, fun, and ridiculous.
As much as they might be caricatures of archetypal characters from the gay scene, uptight and responsible Vince (Craig Kelly) and high-flying lothario Stuart (Aidan Gillen) had plenty of depth. Both grappled with being semi-closeted in parts of their lives, and lost a friend to a drug overdose.
But they were also carefree. When they discover that Nathan (Charlie Hunnam — all three leading actors were straight) is being bullied because he is gay, they roar right up to the school gates in their vandalised car, “queer” scrawled along one side in spray-paint and Suede’s Beautiful Ones blaring out, to yell abuse at the perpetrators.
Sure, not all of the show is perfect. It turns out Nathan (who initially lies about his age) is only 15. Though it’s true that shows should be free to depict immoral, flawed, unethical, or illegal behaviour — and why should gay characters be held to different standards? — the celebratory tone can feel slightly jarring here. Davies’ decision to exclude the Aids crisis entirely from the series also annoyed some activists. But as the screenwriter and producer has explained, Queer as Folk is set in a semi-fantastical world. “I refused to let our lives be defined by disease, so I excluded it on purpose,” he said. And of course, he would later go on to examine the devastating epidemic in gut-punching detail with 2021’s It’s a Sin.
Though I came to the show a little later on, Queer as Folk paved the way for the subsequent Channel 4 dramas I watched hidden away and alone as a teenager, the volume at barely a whisper, my finger poised over the remote in case anybody caught me.
Though poor old Kimberley certainly goes through an awful lot of strife in the Brighton-based 2005 drama Sugar Rush, most of her woes stemmed from the fact that the titular Sugar is just “a bit of a twat” rather than much internalised shame about being gay; there’s plenty of drug-taking, hedonism, and dildo-waving along the way, and so my teenage self was obviously thrilled. Lip Service — an admittedly inferior, Scottish counterpart to The L Word — also owed a huge amount to Queer as Folk.
As Ruta Gedmintas, who played Frankie in Lip Service, put it: “Queer as Folk had a groundbreaking status because there hadn’t been a show like that before.”
Skins, which featured several LGBTQ+ plots, also feels like a younger sibling to the show, depicting a similar brand of chaos, and teenagers letting loose, doing stupid things, and often having heaps of fun in the process.
And as Queer as Folk celebrates its 25th birthday, its legacy is clear to see. “All of us have been those people at one time or another,” Davies said. “We’ve all been young and stupid, or young and confident; we’ve definitely all been young. That’s what the series was about.”
What El liked this week
Silicone God
I’m totally hooked on Victoria Brooks’ weird and wonderful debut novel, from the Nottingham indie publisher MOIST. Not for the faint-hearted, this sci-fi story follows Shae, who is — of course! — a mistress made of “rotten flesh” and becomes embroiled in the grand designs of Evaline: a tentacled deity made out of silicone. Raunchy, surrealist mayhem follows.
Allie X — Girl With No Face
I have a feeling that this brilliantly bonkers new record, from Canadian pop oddball Allie X, will be staying on heavy rotation for the rest of 2024. Glammy, and riddled with nods to Eighties New Wave, I’ve had it on repeat all week: it’s out today.
