For a whole generation, this week marks the 25th anniversary of quietly tuning in to Channel 4 with the sound turned right down, in the desperate hope that it didn’t arouse suspicion.
Queer As Folk, Russell T Davies’ series about the lives of three gay friends, debuted in February 1999. It was a bold look at the heart of Manchester’s gay scene that provided something then rare in British television: a joyous exploration of what it meant to be gay.
“I vividly remember thinking: ‘Canal Street, does such a place really exist?’” says the BBC Radio 2 DJ Owain Wyn Evans. “It was a far cry from the head count of absolute zero role models or reference points available for me at the time in Ammanford, south Wales.”
The show has been celebrated as a pivotal moment of LGBTQ+ representation, but it wasn’t the only one. Here, notable LGBTQ+ people, including Joe Lycett, Juno Dawson and Alice Oseman, talk about the television that helped them.
The Naked Civil Servant
A biography of the life of the raconteur Quentin Crisp, starring John Hurt, this 1975 TV film explored Crisp’s ambition to live as a flamboyant and unapologetic gay man in England in the 1930s and 1940s. Hurt’s performance received acclaim at a time when empathic portrayals on TV were rare. “I watched it with people who for the first time saw a portrayal of an openly gay man they found sympathetic,” says the Rev Richard Coles.
Joe Lycett says: “John Hurt’s film depictions of Quentin Crisp are so wonderfully tender towards the iconic queer oddball. Crisp was fascinating to me – openly experimental with gender norms and sexuality at a time when it was incredibly dangerous to be so. Plus, witty, lyrical and very funny.”
The Naked Civil Servant is on Prime Video
The L Word
This US drama, which debuted in 2004, was groundbreaking in the way it chronicled the lives of lesbian and bisexual women living in West Hollywood. Previously, lesbian and bisexual women had usually been single characters in shows full of heterosexual characters.
“I would guess 90% of millennial lesbians consumed The L Word with the same excited hunger that I did,” says the comedian Suzi Ruffell. “It was the first time I saw happy, gay, successful women on telly; the first time I saw us represented where our sexuality wasn’t a punchline or a plot point for a straight character. It covered parenting, breakups, affairs, friendship, cancer, death, love, careers, divorce, coming out, homophobia and sex – quite a lot of sex, actually.”
The L Word is on Prime Video
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
With Sarah Michelle Gellar in the title role, Buffy was subversive and feminist and, frankly, in a league of its own when it landed in 1997. But it was also radical in showing the romantic relationship between Willow (Alyson Hannigan) and Tara (Amber Benson). If only their storyline didn’t have such a sad ending.
“Their friendship turned romance was the first time I had seen a queer female relationship portrayed on television and it really was beautiful,” says the comedian Rosie Jones. “Lesbian witches … what’s not to love? But – spoiler! – I am still not over Tara’s death.”
Buffy the Vampire Slayer is on Disney+
Will & Grace
The sitcom, which first aired in 1998, helped familiarise mainstream heterosexual audiences with LGBTQ+ culture. “Only a year after Ellen DeGeneres came out, and almost torpedoed her career, came a sitcom about not one but two gay men, already out and living their lives,” says Adam Kay, the writer of This Is Going to Hurt.
While the show’s name implies it was all about Will (Eric McCormack) and Grace (Debra Messing), it was an ensemble effort, with Jack (Sean Hayes) – and his never-ending array of jobs – and the outspoken millionaire Karen (Megan Mullally) also front and centre.
“Jack was a huge upgrade on so many camp innuendo machines who came before him. He was a gay man who actually had sex,” says Kay. “Plus, he was hilarious to be around – and associating something with a good time is an age-old trick to oil the wheels of acceptance.”
Will & Grace is on Now
Goodness Gracious Me
“Around the same time that Queer As Folk was on Channel 4, I was watching Goodness Gracious Me on the BBC,” says the drag queen Asifa Lahore of the 1998 sketch show. Starring Meera Syal, Sanjeev Bhaskar, Kulvinder Ghir and Nina Wadia, it explored British Asian culture, lampooning stereotypes in the process.
“My favourite sketch was when a British Indian son comes out as gay to his Indian parents and introduces his white British boyfriend, the gag being that his parents are less concerned about him being gay, rather him not bringing home an Indian boyfriend.
“The south Asian community still references this sketch as a queer pop culture moment,” says Lahore. “True diversity and inclusion long before queer culture entered the mainstream.”
Goodness Gracious Me is on BBC iPlayer
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
This Bafta-winning 1990 coming-of-age drama, based on the semi-autobiographical novel by Jeanette Winterson, followed Jess (Charlotte Coleman) as she rejected her Pentecostal upbringing after realising she was a lesbian.
“It aired when I was at university,” says the BBC newsreader Jane Hill. “I’d never seen lesbians portrayed on television before. That alone was seismic.
“Even though, to my great regret, it took me many more years to accept that I was gay, there’s no doubt that seeing on screen a young woman explore who she really was, and challenge the expectations she’d been brought up with, made an impression on me.
“More than 30 years later, gay and bi women are still under-represented on British TV. Why was Lip Service cancelled after just one series? LGBTQ+ representation has come a long way, but for women there is still much to do.”
Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit is on Prime Video
Keeping Up Appearances
The smugness, the entitlement and the fact that Hyacinth Bucket (Patricia Routledge) corrected everyone to pronounce her surname Bouquet: 1990’s Keeping Up Appearances was a camp delight.
“The references to her son and his ‘friend’ Tarquin were not lost on me as I grew up,” says William Hanson, the co-host of Help I Sexted My Boss. “Hyacinth’s blind, maybe naive, loving acceptance of Sheridan’s life was a comfort.
“But Hyacinth herself, with her dogmatic insistence on a correct way of doing things, connected with me and gave me hope that my own insistence on elevating the everyday to something more exciting could be channelled into something in later life.”
Keeping Up Appearances is on BBC iPlayer
It’s a Sin
While Russell T Davies’s 2021 hit was not the first drama to reflect on the HIV/Aids crisis (The Normal Heart, An Early Frost and Angels in America had gone before it), this five-parter was masterly in the way it homed in on the lives brutally cut short and the people who stayed to help.
“It’s a Sin’s impact was extraordinary – bringing to the mainstream stories that have been a part of the HIV community’s history for decades and doing so in a way that felt authentic and meaningful and that connected with viewers,” says Deborah Gold, the chief executive of the National Aids Trust.
Why did it connect so well? “Because Russell T Davies wrote them with compassion and love – two things they were denied at the time,” says Christopher Sweeney, host of the Homo Sapiens podcast. “I still think about it on a weekly basis.”
It’s a Sin is on Channel 4
The soaps
Colin and Guido’s kiss in EastEnders. Todd and Nick’s kiss (and Todd and Karl’s snog) in Coronation Street. Beth and Margaret’s kiss in Brookside. And of course, the will-they-won’t-they John Paul and Craig storyline in Hollyoaks (which felt like it lasted for years).
Soaps have pioneered nuanced reflections of LGBTQ+ lives, usually way ahead of comedy and dramas – and they continue to do so. Hollyoaks has featured the trans character Sally St Claire (Annie Wallace) for a number of years, while Emmerdale’s Liv Flaherty (Isobel Steele) had storylines dedicated to her character exploring her asexuality.
“Soaps are pre-watershed family viewing and they’re also about normal, everyday people, so queer love in that space has real impact,” says Patrick Walters, an executive producer of the TV series Heartstopper. “It’s normalising and exciting.”
Eurotrash
’Allo, my British chums! The deliberately lowbrow late-night Channel 4, fronted by Jean Paul Gaultier and Antoine de Caunes and narrated by Maria McEarlane, launched in 1993. It was a fast-paced, often rude celebration of European oddness. There was an abundance of nudity, innuendo, obscure animal acts and, of course, the sidekicks Pipi and Popo.
“Campy, sexual and irreverent, it really pushed the limits of what could be shown on TV,” says the DJ and drag queen Jodie Harsh. “The cartoon-coloured set, Lolo Ferrari in a pink bikini surrounded by oiled-up guys … it awakened something inside me.”
Eurotrash is on Prime Video
Orange Is the New Black
We are used to it now, but Netflix launching a show that could be watched around the world was a revolutionary concept in the early 2010s. One of the shows that spearheaded this change was Orange Is the New Black, Jenji Kohan’s 2013 comedy drama set in a women’s prison.
“It did a really good job of representing a range of queer women,” says the LBC broadcaster and mental health campaigner Natasha Devon. “Watching this was also the first time I remember thinking that women really seemed like they were genuinely attracted to one another and the sex didn’t seem like it was being performed for a male gaze.”
Orange Is the New Black is on Netflix
The reality shows
Big Brother has been inclusive since its inception – that is very much part of its appeal. Brian Dowling, a gay man, won series two in 2001; Nadia Almada, a transgender woman, won series five in 2004; and last year’s final featured only queer men and women.
Eurovision has been close to the LGBTQ+ community for decades, with notable winners including Dana International in 1998, Conchita Wurst in 2014 and Duncan Laurence in 2019.
And then, of course, there is Drag Race, a drag queen competition fronted by RuPaul that started in 2009 on a small channel in the US called Logo. It has spawned a global franchise, with iterations in Thailand, Chile, Belgium, Sweden, the UK and elsewhere.
“RuPaul’s Drag Race tapped into the renaissance of drag in grassroots queer clubs and put it on a global stage,” says Alex Needham, the Guardian’s arts editor. “The UK version is an astonishing and very endearing collision of NYC ballroom culture and British camp. There’s been no programme in the past five years that has been so consistently hilarious, joyful and unapologetic.”
Euphoria
Sam Levinson’s audacious and provocative HBO series, which began in 2019, makes the British teen series Skins look tame in comparison.
The author and screenwriter Juno Dawson says that the first time she recognised herself on TV was through the character Jules. “There’s a separate conversation to be had about the slightly clammy-palmed nature of how director Sam Levinson chose to shoot her but, in Jules, I finally had a complicated, messy and flawed trans character.
“Prior well-meaning portrayals tended to depict trans characters as victims or angels. Pose, for example, had an abundance of trans characters … but they were almost always mystical beings whom cisgender characters could learn from.
“In her co-written episode, Hunter Schafer was given an opportunity to explore her inner experience of gender in a way I haven’t seen elsewhere.”
Euphoria is on Now
Ackley Bridge
Channel 4’s answer to Waterloo Road, Ackley Bridge first aired in 2017. The early-evening Yorkshire-set series looked at the merging of two schools – one mostly white and the other predominately Asian – and explored a raft of serious issues from mental health to race and religion.
“Nas Paracha was the only queer Asian woman character I’d seen on TV at that time,” says the Labour MP Nadia Whittome. “It felt so heartening not only to have that kind of representation, but also to see that they were loved and accepted by their family.”
Ackley Bridge is on Channel 4
I Am Not Okay With This
A coming-of-age comedy drama with engrossing characters and a shocking (and incredibly bloody) cliffhanger? Of course Netflix canned it after one season! Yet this 2020 drama, based on the Charles Forsman graphic novel starring Sydney (Sophia Lillis), is fondly remembered. The one-series wonder grappled with her realisation that she had telekinetic powers while her life was literally burning around her.
“I Am Not Okay With This is possibly my favourite teen show ever,” says Alice Oseman, who created Heartstopper. “Understated, minimalistic and incredibly precise in its themes and characters, this show is a swift knife to the heart. I will for ever mourn its premature cancellation.
“Does she have uncontrollable superpowers? Or is it all a metaphor for the feelings of anguish, confusion and shame that can surround realising you’re queer? Why not both?”
I Am Not Okay With This is on Netflix
Broad City
Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Wexler’s surreal sitcom, from 2014, followed two close friends living in New York City. It was a show that felt made for the internet, and some scenes have lived on as a meme, from Illana exasperatingly running down a hallway to her sarcastically responding “How am I?” when asked about her day.
“They’re both casually queer and exploring it in a way that feels really positive, subtle and non-shameful,” says Jack Rooke, the writer and creator of Big Boys. “They’re also massive stoners, so really we did need a queer stoner crossover comedy – and I’m glad it came from them.”
Broad City is on Paramount+
Absolutely Fabulous
Patsy (Joanna Lumley) freaking out when the paper published her real age. Edina (Jennifer Saunders) clinging on to youth culture and her sense of superiority (“You only work in a shop you know, you can drop the attitude”). Their dysfunctional friendship at the heart of London’s fashion scene, which first graced our screens in 1992, was ridiculous but life-affirming.
“It was way ahead of its time in its gay references that never felt forced,” says the BBC Radio 2 DJ Scott Mills. “And they were often off the cuff and matter-of-fact, as they always should have been, but very rarely were in other shows of the same age.”
Absolutely Fabulous is on ITVX Premium
Glee
Ryan Murphy’s pop-culture-obsessed series about a singing club in Ohio was subversive and constantly upbeat. While the legacy of the show is complicated by the deaths of several actors, it is undeniable that Glee was a huge step forward in queer representation in mainstream TV.
“It was the first time I felt seen on TV, as well as the first time I felt optimistic about living as an out queer person,” says Jamie Windust, a contributing editor at Gay Times. “Stories of unrequited love, bullying, coming out – especially from Chris Colfer’s character, Kurt. It was the first time I saw what I was going through as a young queer/non-binary child on TV.”
Glee is on Disney+
Schitt’s Creek
The Canadian comedy, created by Eugene and Dan Levy, about a wealthy family who lost everything, became a mainstream hit after it was added to Netflix in 2017. The relationship between David, who was pansexual, and Patrick was particularly praised.
“I probably identified with him a little too much,” says the comedian Daniel Foxx. “This fussy snob in Helmut Lang hoodies, with an expensive taste in soaps, is so at odds with the backwater town he finds himself in. But as you watch, it dawns on you that several episodes have gone by and no one has criticised or even commented on his sexuality. This is simply a world where people don’t question it – it’s a total non-issue.
“The people of Schitt’s Creek accept him for exactly who he is. And when their relationship takes off, they’re not a ‘gay couple’ – they’re just a couple, which this whole rural community is rooting for. It warmed my cold heart.”
Schitt’s Creek is on Netflix
Looking
Before All of Us Strangers, there was Looking. Launched in 2014, the HBO series following three gay friends in San Francisco was cancelled after just 18 episodes (and a feature-length special).
But it has aged like a fine wine. It feels remarkably human and captures beautifully the little things – such as when Patrick (Jonathan Groff) and Richie (Raúl Castillo) catch each other’s eyes on the subway for the first time. Or the heartbreaking way Kevin (Russell Tovey) rubs Patrick’s ears when he knows he is seeing him for the last time.
After years of being “othered” because of my sexuality, Looking was the first time I realised that I could – and should – experience the same highs (and lows) of romantic love as everyone else; that there is a world out there and I should explore it.
Looking is on Now
