A sad farewell to Steven and Chris
Steven and Chris wasn’t the first collaboration between Chris Hyndman and Steven Sabados.
The pair — a romantic couple in real life — first worked together professionally with The Sabados Group, a design firm they co-founded in 1992. Then came Designer Guys in 1999, followed by So Chic, Design Rivals and finally, in 2008, Steven and Chris, their successful CBC lifestyle series. That show was pulled off the air on Aug. 4, the day Hyndman was found dead near the home he shared with Sabados in Toronto’s east end. He was 49.
Steven and Chris was fun television — Hyndman’s effusive flamboyance played brilliantly against Sabados’ wry deadpan — but it was a show that also leaves a serious legacy.
The pair were chatty and sharp, but never (or, at least, rarely) campy; and their particular brand of aspirational living was inflected less by their individual identities as gay men, and more by their shared identity as a couple.
Steven and Chris was good TV because it was good TV, not because it was gay TV. It was, nonetheless, a gay TV show, whether Hyndman and Sabados wanted to call it that or not (they didn’t). It was also groundbreaking: Steven and Chris was the first daytime talk show hosted by a same-sex couple.
Steven and Chris promoted a lifestyle. No, that doesn’t mean they were a part of some strange conspiratorial “gay agenda.” They didn’t represent a crisis of traditional values, nor did they call the role of the traditional family into question.
There was no transgression or deviance, or whatever it is that people who use terms like transgression and deviance might cry foul over.
What Steven and Chris were selling about themselves, again, wasn’t their gayness. They didn’t hide it, but they didn’t capitalize on it either. Instead, they sold healthy living, stylish fixtures, clever table settings and snappy conversation. But they were the hosts, and what Steven and Chris sold about themselves was their shared identity as a committed, comfortable couple with remarkable chemistry. This is an aspiration that transcends orientation; this is universally appealing, even without wainscotting and five-minutes-to-better-abs.
I visited the set of Steven and Chris earlier this year, around Super Bowl time. The two had agreed to film a segment for the National Post during which they helped me make a “Stadium Snack Bowl.” I can’t stand watching the clip because I look so uncomfortable sandwiched between the two, whose frenetic charisma completely took over as soon as the cameras started rolling. In fact, I don’t remember anything about my time at the CBC studios that day but being in awe of Steven and Chris themselves: with how good they were at their jobs; with how well they communicated with one another on-camera and off (both modes, by the way, were completely different, as you would imagine).
Sabados popped into the dressing room on his way out of the studios to pick up his jacket. We made some small talk, but it was brief: Hyndman came in shortly after and ushered his partner toward the door. But it wasn’t rude. They had somewhere to be, and they had to be there together. A Canadian TV legacy has come to an untimely end with Hyndman’s death, but so too has an incredible partnership. And that’s the real tragedy.