![queer as folk review queer as folk review](https://www.onrpg.com/wp-content/gallery/Feather/Feather-03.jpg)
Lipman: The network put a disclaimer on the show, at least for the first couple of seasons, saying, “This does not reflect everyone in the gay community. We were concerning ourselves with being truthful. Those people who were primarily concerned with, “What are straight people going to think of us?” And that was something Dan and I were not concerning ourselves with. That was always an issue of contention for us. Some people loved that, other people were alarmed by it, other people were concerned that it was not putting the best foot forward in terms of the image of gay people on television or what straight people thought of gay people. That was the intention: to show the good and the questionable in a nonjudgmental way. But our intention was to tell the truth as we knew it and, to a certain degree, how we experienced it. But it brought up certain issues we were really not expecting.Ĭowen: Some members of the gay community were concerned that perhaps we were showing things that did not reflect the gay community in the best possible light. But as time went on, that initial shock wore off.
![queer as folk review queer as folk review](https://variety.com/wp-content/uploads/2000/11/rqueer.jpg)
#Queer as folk review tv#
Because when you do something that has not been done before, especially in a country with a lot of puritanical issues - it’s easier to show gun violence than it is sex on TV - and you do something as explicit as what we were doing, some people had trouble seeing the rest of the show. Most surprising of all, it was a hit.Ĭowen: I think they were more than surprised they were actually shocked. It also had good characters, storylines and humor. It wasn’t just a sexually sensational show.
![queer as folk review queer as folk review](https://i1.wp.com/thequeerreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/1475811502985.gif)
Not only did it happen, but people thought it was pretty good. People were generally surprised because they thought that there was no way that this was going to work - even our cast, many of whom said at the time that they couldn’t believe that we were actually going to shoot that pilot script, that it was ever going to happen. Lipman: I remember we had major coverage in Time magazine and Newsweek and the Internet was still just beginning. What was the early feedback like after the show premiered? So there was a bit of tension, nervousness and trepidation. We asked Showtime if they could put a security camera outside the door so that our assistant could see who was there before we opened the door. There was no guard booth - we were simply in an office building - and we felt rather vulnerable and exposed to anyone walking in the door of the office. Our offices were in a building on Wilshire and LaCienega - we were not on a studio lot. It was a rather hostile environment in many ways toward gay people, so when we started the show, we were a little nervous about a reaction from the religious right. Something like 14 states still had sodomy laws. DOMA was still in place as was Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. What was the TV landscape like when you first started this show? How risky a venture would you say doing this show was at the time?Ĭowen: In the year 2000, at the turn of the 21st century, it was a very different world. Lipman: Jerry Offsay was president at the time, and he was very supportive of gay issues and also a lot of gay projects, so this was not an isolated project it was something that fit into the network’s profile.
![queer as folk review queer as folk review](https://film-fanatic.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/QAF5.jpg)
Ĭowen: The real challenge in getting it on was to be able to do it in an uncensored way without a lot of network interference, and we were lucky that Showtime was so supportive and agreed with us that we had to equal or surpass the British version. Lipman: That was in the front-page story in the Los Angeles Times Sunday Calendar section. While society was years away from marriage equality, TV was about to get an honest and unfiltered look at the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender culture. There were sodomy laws still on the books in 17 states. The Defense of Marriage Act and Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell were still in place.
#Queer as folk review series#
When the Showtime drama - based on the British series of the same name - premiered in 2000, the LGBT political landscape was considerably different than it is today: Gay marriage wasn’t legal anywhere in the U.S. Ten years ago Friday, Showtime’s groundbreaking drama Queer as Folk signed off for the final time with an episode about LGBT assimilation that is just as relevant today as it was then.