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Both characters play larger roles as the series goes on, much to the benefit of the show as a whole. But the series quickly becomes about the reverberations of that traumatic event, and how it causes the various characters to spin out in a number of different ways.Īnd by involving the violation of a queer public space in the narrative, the series finds a way to neatly incorporate the viewpoints of characters outside of the already-established friend group - club patrons like the drag queen Bussey (Armand Fields) and Marvin (Eric Graise), a guarded, reflexively jaded young man who uses a wheelchair. Were this event used simply to dramatize the threat faced by the queer community, it might come off as tasteless and a bit ham-fisted, maybe even exploitive. in the desultory way the old QaFs did.īut creator Stephen Dunn introduces a controversial element in the pilot - a mass shooting in a gay club frequented by many of the above characters, not all of whom survive. Had the series contented itself with this clutch of characters, it could have churned through soapy plot turns - betrayals, breakups, revelations, etc. And there's Julian (Ryan O'Connell), Brodie's sardonically nerdy younger brother who was born with cerebral palsy. There's Mingus (Fin Argus), one of Ruthie's high school students who's taking their first steps into embracing drag. There's also Noah (Johnny Sibily), Brodie's ex, who's hiding the fact that he's been hooking up with Daddius (Chris Renfro) for reasons that soon become clear. (You perhaps begin to detect a theme, here.) In the pilot, Brodie selfishly urges Ruthie to join him for a night out, which she does, selfishly. Brodie is best friends with Ruthie (Jesse James Keitel), a trans woman who's married to Shar (CG), a non-binary person who's pregnant with twins. and, because the universe is beneficent, Kim Cattrall. Brodie (Devin Way) is a young hot gay man who returns to New Orleans after dropping out of med school, to the dismay of his adoptive parents, played by Ed Begley Jr. Some relationships are simple enough to diagram. The queer community's tendency to build and police strict silos based on race, age, body type, gender, income and disability was not something the old homogenous Queer as Folk series felt they needed to address, and largely didn't.īut the new Queer as Folk eagerly embraces the challenge of creating a diverse network of characters not merely for the sake of doing so, but as a means to let them meaningfully interact and delineate themselves, to variously clash and come together until they emerge as fuller, more rounded people in the eyes of the viewer. What's new, besides the series' matter-of-fact diversity, is how much the show's creators have clearly thought about depicting its range of characters and situations, and giving them real reasons to meaningfully co-exist within the same social circle. Dialogue veers from an affronted lecture about intersectionality to a really solid joke about poppers. Even so, many of the old flaws persist: The characters are selfish and hopelessly enamored of themselves. The new Queer as Folk has broadened the palette, which means it can tell stories and give voice to characters the old series never could or did. And while they are to be commended for storytelling that was always less concerned with chasing mainstream straight acceptance than the Will and Grace-s of the world, both told their stories from a narrow and familiar point of view that centered the travails of the young, white, cis gay man with a gym membership. series were sexy, sometimes funny, sometimes moving, but deeply flawed projects. A fusillade of queer pop-culture references that serve as a series of dog-whistles to reassure queer audiences that they're represented in the show's writers room. Breezy dialogue that tends to lapse into distinctly non-breezy self-righteous speechifying, and/or. Noxiously self-involved if not lightly repellent, yet who somehow manage to remain surrounded by a tight circle of mystifyingly supportive friends, all of whom talk in. Queer characters who have explicit sex a tremendous lot, most of whom are. A blithe, defiantly melodramatic sensibility ( QaF is a soap, first, last and always) and a cast of. series that followed (they ran on Channel 4 and Showtime, respectively, back at the turn of the century), here's what you will need to bring to the table.ġ. If you've been tasked with rebooting Queer as Folk for the present day, and wish to stick to the general narrative parameters shared by both the original U.K. Brodie (Devin Way) and Ruthie (Jesse James Keitel) are some of the peacocking queer folk on Peacock's Queer as Folk.