Tales of the City reboot still has relevant stories to tell
Groundbreaking series for LGBTQ characters still relevant in reboot
Tales of the City Debuts June 7, Netflix
When the miniseries Tales of the City was shown on PBS in January of 1994, some people freaked out.
Those people felt the six-part series, with openly homosexual themes complete with nudity and drug use, had no place on the publicly funded network.
The funny thing, though, is the 1977-set series about the lives of the residents of 28 Barbary Lane in San Francisco landed the largest ratings for a drama ever for PBS and a coveted Peabody Award. Yet, the squeaky puritanical wheel driven by the likes of the American Family Association got the grease, and PBS developed cold feet and pulled out of any involvement with any sequels. Subsequently, Showtime produced two more series — one in 1998 and the other in 2001.
Fast-forward to today, and the streaming giant Netflix will be premièring a new 10-part Tales of the City this week.
Highlighting the series reboot is the return of stars Laura Linney as the plot-centring Mary Ann Singleton, with Olympia Dukakis as the trans pot-smoking, advice-giving — and in this series — big-secret-keeping landlady, Anna Madrigal.
Toronto’s Paul Gross also returns as nice-guy Brian Hawkins, Mary Ann’s very much spurned ex-husband and single dad to Shawna (Ellen Page).
“It was kind of weird when we first did the show,” says Gross, recalling the first season. “I didn’t understand the political context of it. That it was in so many ways groundbreaking and revolutionary, that you would see queer people on screen and they would be treated with dignity. They would be normally going about their lives, but it created a huge uproar.
“It threatened the existence of PBS,” says Gross, who plays one of the straight characters on the show. “They were going to pull all of its funding. So the whole tone of that to me was so weird. Maybe, I don’t know, part of it is coming from Canada where we are not quite so hysterical about stuff like that, but it sure seemed really strange.
“It’s interesting to go back to it now, many years later, when there has been quite a lot of ground gained in normalizing otherwise marginalized lives. But there is still a long way to go. So, I think having these characters presented, and even a more diverse group of characters presented, in the current iteration of the show is really terrific,” he says.
“But I am rather hoping it doesn’t stir up the same kind of lunacy as the last one did.”
Gross says he heard, at the time, and he has heard just recently, that the show made a difference in the lives of LGBTQ communities and gave a voice to their members.
Recently, a reporter from Poland thanked Gross and told him the show was important to her and other queer people in her country — a country, it should be noted, that has a populist, openly anti-LGBTQ government.
“When you are making a show, you forget about things like that,” Gross says. “You think quite narrowly about it, particularly when you are doing something for Netflix. Its reach is global. This will mean a lot to a lot of people, I hope. It is very moving to hear that.”
The series is based on Armistead Maupin’s novels of an LGBTQ-friendly enclave that began as a San Francisco Chronicle serial, Tales of the City, with the multi-generational cast now having multi-generational stories to tell. The old gay guard facing off against the “woke” PC kids makes for good historical exposition for those who haven’t watched the first HIV/AIDS-informed series.
“The show’s interesting,” Gross says. “It’s got some of the older characters, obviously, then it’s got this whole new younger generation, so at times there’s generational conflict or a divide in terms of experience and political understanding.”
Gross says the new series is the first time he has played a character whose aging matched his own. “I think it is rare to ever have the opportunity to do that, so that was really fun,” he says. “Also, I didn’t remember a lot of the previous show. So, I had to go back and watch it, so some of that was really fun and some of it was pretty horrifying and I was kind of shocked to see how big my hair was and how different it is in terms of colour now.
“You come in old. It’s done,” says Gross, who sports an au-naturel head silver hair. “Laura and I would say to each other: ‘Oh God, we’re getting old.’”
But Gross says beware — a TV show is one thing, and it’s great to have the many colours of the rainbow represented in art, but the openness does not mean the struggle is over.
“In some ways we have moved so far, and in other ways we seem to be regressing,” he says. “I think that clearly a lot of the kind of hard-right upswing is of concern to everybody, but not just in the rainbow coalition, but also in general.
“We can’t just suddenly start going backward,” says Gross, who points out Netflix’s near-fully global reach. (Iran, Saudi Arabia and China are the only countries that don’t allow the streaming service.)
“Having spent a lot of time in the Middle East, it will be fascinating to see what kind of reaction there is in Egypt and Jordan. But you can’t think about that while you’re making a show because you are clearly thinking about much simpler things.
“But, I do hope the show has a strong impact internationally. And I think it might because it is really engaging. It’s hilarious but it is also very moving. It’s complicated, it’s unexpected and the cast is fabulous. It’s like a refuge, almost. It feels like a harbour somewhere where you can go where things are actually OK.”
The new series picks up two decades or so after the last one ended. The Barbary Lane gang is celebrating Anna’s 90th birthday. There’s singing, dancing, drinking and, of course, a birthday surprise in the form of the return of Mary Ann. Long gone, the “prodigal daughter” is back, and not everyone is happy about that.
With a cast of old and new (Zosia Mamet of Girls fame has a particularly juicy role as a young filmmaker), the show feels familiar and very contemporary. The residents find themselves smack dab in the middle of unaffordable real estate hell. What’s more contemporary than that?
I think having these characters presented, and even a more diverse group of characters presented, in the current iteration of the show is really terrific.