'I binged Six Feet Under just for the gayness of it': LGBT celebs on their favourite queer TV
I had Will & Grace DVDs on a loop when I was younger. I must have been 10 when it first went on Channel 4. It was incredibly rare back then to have that level of exposure for queer characters. I wasn’t out when I was watching it, and it gave me markers for how to express myself.
Where I grew up, the local magazines and so on were all very sexual, which wasn’t where I was at then. It was about identity for me, rather than biology. The fact it was a family sitcom made it accessible. Will is a successful lawyer, they have a beautiful apartment. It was hopeful and optimistic about what you could be as a queer person. It made it an appealing lifestyle, not heavy and surrounded by homophobia. And I was always so fascinated by Eric McCormack playing Will, a straight actor playing a gay character. That was brave then.
There’s a brilliant bit of dialogue where Jack says to Will something along the lines of: “Don’t say that, America doesn’t like it when you’re too gay.” It was a nod to the fact that there was a limit to how much honesty an audience would take in terms of the practicalities of his sexuality. I loved how they dealt with that in a tongue-in-cheek way.
Margaret Cho, Six Feet Under
Six Feet Under was the first time I remember binge-watching TV, and it was for the gayness of it. You had this gay funeral director and his black gay policemen husband. They created a family unit in this funeral home. They looked at different family dynamics with gay couples; in later seasons they had a three-way, which was a massive deal, trying to open up their relationship.
What stuck out is how it had gay characters who were confronting different stories. Usually gay characters on TV only really talk about coming out, hiding their sexuality or Aids. You didn’t have other storylines. And there were still struggles, but you also saw daily life. It was a turning point: they set a new standard of gay entertainment going beyond this entry level stuff.
The show made me realise we had reached a point in television where we were maturing both as a community and an audience. We were growing up as contributors. I could feel the presence of our community behind the camera, telling our stories. It was like we had been a part of the industry for so long, and could start making ourselves known.
Nick Grimshaw, Queer As Folk
I was very much figuring out my sexuality in 1999, as a 15-year-old. Even watching the adverts for Queer As Folk – guys kissing on mainstream telly – felt revelatory. I didn’t even see the whole series, but the moments I caught were groundbreaking: I hadn’t seen any representation of gay life like it on TV before. The characters had their own personalities, not just one stereotype. Until that point, the only gay people you’d see were camp comedians, but in Queer As Folk gay men were multifaceted. Being bitchy or sassy was no longer the only representation of us.
And it was set in Manchester where I grew up. I’d heard about Canal Street – Manchester’s gay village – but had never been. Now I could see what was on my doorstep, what was to come when we went out clubbing. When coming to terms with being gay, seeing a community that was within reach helped. When we started going out, it felt as if we were going to a film set.
Rebecca Root, Big Brother Series 5 (2004)
I didn’t watch the first couple of Big Brothers, but then I began my transition in 2002/3. You can do it in so many ways, and I didn’t have facial hair removal before starting. I was undergoing a lot of very visible physical changes having already changed my name. I was supported by amazing friends and family, but I felt very visible. Like I stuck out and was always being seen.
Enter Nadia Almada. She was a transgender woman who was visible, too. And she was loved. Not just by her Big Brother housemates, but by the British public too – who knew she was trans.
There had been a trans storyline on Coronation Street by then, but it was played by a cisgender woman [Julie Hesmondhalgh]. And it was just that: a storyline. So to see Nadia was fabulous – she wasn’t a character, but a real person. To a mid-transition trans woman she was inspirational: a beautiful woman, unapologetic, funny. I had a flag supporting her on my desk, and punched the air when she won. She lived her life under the scrutiny of millions, and succeeded. She was one of my own community; my own clan. It gave me the confidence to believe that it could happen for me, too.
Will Young, Big Brother Series 2 (2001)
Big Brother was massive by the second series. I was about to start my finals at university, and my housemates and I would cram into the sitting room to watch every night religiously. Brian Dowling was the hit of the show. A gay flight attendant, likable, vulnerable, open and funny.
I was sitting there watching, having come out, so thrilled that they’d managed to get someone on the show who was gay, and the public didn’t just vote him out right away. And then he won – everyone really loved him. What Brian did on that show was groundbreaking: he showed that gay people could be popular. It took a lot of courage.
I knew then I wanted to go into pop music, and that I would never pretend to not be gay. But I wasn’t confident in my sexuality at this point, and it was exciting to see someone who was. I knew I was going into Pop Idol. I’d sent off the form. I think he gave me confidence that the public could be more discerning and accepting than I might have thought.
Russell T Davies, Soap
I must have been about 14, when Soap started airing on Sunday nights in ITV regions – an American sitcom with (a pre-fame) Billy Crystal playing Jodie: the gay son. Even now, decades later, Jodie would be an astonishing gay character – he was out, happy, clever and kind. The nature of television, whether sitcoms or drama, often requires characters to have storylines that make them unhappy. And that’s true for gay characters, too. But Jodie was different: he thrived. At the time it was a huge show in America, and there just weren’t many gay characters on British TV.
Watching it with mum and my family at home, not out, I had this huge guttural reaction to him, although I sat there still not wanting to show it. For me, it was incredibly powerful, to see him, and that’s still true of similar gay characters now. We may have more gay material on television, but there are still hundreds of thousands of school kids that will see storylines like this and still sit watching in silence waiting for their moment to come out, a window opened into a world they’ll soon walk into.
Sophie Duker, Sugar Rush
Sugar Rush taught me so much: how the lesbian state of being is a constant state of pining; it introduced me to the idea that a black woman could be the sexy love interest in a girl-on-girl story. I don’t know if it was the show that showed me lesbians existed, but it helped me accept that to be a queer woman was OK; legit. To spend that much time with a young lesbian romance was unprecedented.
I went to an all girls school, I just thought all girls had really romantic friendships. I could relate so much to the idea of being really shattered if a friend chose to spend time with their boyfriend over me, that intensity of feeling you only get as a teen. Sugar and Kim don’t end up together, and seeing that it’s not always about things working out with the first girl you fall in love with, but getting permission to be yourself was transformative for me at the time. I didn’t know I was queer and wasn’t ready to acknowledge it. But I thought it must be a thing if it was on TV.
Christopher Being Served? Biggins, Are You
Certainly, when I was much younger, I was influenced by John Inman – Mr
Humphries – in Are You Being Served? He portrayed a very outrageously camp character, and got a lot of stick for it, but it was so real and convincing and amusing. It triggered a spark in me. He played a character who worked in the men’s department and would mince from one end of the room to the other, dressed in – and saying – the most outrageous things. It was terribly funny.
I wasn’t aware of it at the time, but a lot of gay people weren’t happy with what John Inman did, they said his portrayal was offensive and a caricature. Certainly, there would be complaints now if it was to be made today. But these were characters I wanted to play: I went on to create similarly camp and outrageous characters and loved it.
Jade Anouka, The Bisexual (2018)
There really aren’t many black, queer women on TV in the UK. So thinking of something was difficult. The Bisexual, though, put bisexuality on mainstream channel screens in a realistic way. It was mega to see an honest telling of bisexuality. Desiree Akhavan’s character had genuine relationships with men and women. The show depicted the complexities of it, instead of just a joke being made about having “the best of both worlds” and making out like it’s an easy ride.
It felt important – it showed that bisexual people exist. And when I was younger, without bi characters, I didn’t know that. I just assumed it was one thing or the other: gay or straight. And it dealt with the issues around being bisexual within the gay community remarkably, too. Take the way it showed the treatment of a bisexual woman by her gay female friends after she entered into a relationship with a guy. Her friends felt like she’d been lying to them, it is nuances in the bisexual experience like this that I had never seen on screen.