The future of Queer TV is UNCONVENTIONAL : and we are loving it

The downside of having a successful queer TV series is then the powers that be (which we guess are mainly straight) want to stick with the same formula going forward.  Take, for example, Mid-Century Modern which is cute funny,  gay, but oh so dated.  Created by Max Mutchnick and David Kohan  , who gave us Will & Grace some 27 years ago, which, although it was full of gay stereotypes, we still loved and helped propel to some dizzy heights.  It worked then on the basis that we laughed at the characters, but our culture and our community have both evolved since then. and now we want to laugh WITH THEM instead.

So much as we adore Nathan Lane and are physically in love with Matt Bomer, the concept of three older gay men whose very existence is being obsessed with dating (younger) men insinuates that it is still a major part of gay life here in the US.  Maybe for the older generation, but certainly not for millennials (guys aged between 25 -41) who were born some 20 years after homosexuality had been legalized, and at a time when the LGBTQA community had started to take control of its shape and destiny.  Because Mid-Century is mainstream, it also has the added disadvantage of having Disney and HULU as its distributors, who, I am guessing, are putting their 5 cents worth in to try to ape a world where Jack and Karen still exist.

Now more than ever we are finding other  cultural outlets where ‘our’ stories are being told/made/performed by people within our community giving us a sense of authenticity that we had been denied up until then.  Instead of well-meaning ‘straights’ second quessing our truth, we can now be entertained, informed  and educated by creators living the life.

Kit Williamson is one such example.  This extremely talented queer American actor and filmmaker came on our horizon when he created, wrote, directed and starred in the dark comedy series EASTSIDERS in 2012.  It started its journey on YouTube and was such an immediate hit, it was snapped up by Netflix. It was both funny and sad, beautiful,  very poignant. and extremely relatable. What we particular loved was the idea that Williamson was so obviously in his element talking about how you can truly love a flowed imperfect person 

His next big project was a series called Unconventional which Queerguru’s Ris Fatah reviewed  back in July 2022  and now has FINALLY appeared on REVRY TV   This is what he wrote back then :

Williamson and James Bland have created a very clever series that covers serious themes – including chosen families, parental control, queer hedonism, career aspirations, parenthood, drug use, monogamy v. open relationships and highly medicated individuals – as well the sheer difficulty for creative people to survive in today’s high rent, insecure societies. They do this very subtly in a fun, sexy California styled manner which gets their message across easily. The unapologetic in-your-face queer experience is central to each episode – something the directors feel is very important as queer representation on mainstream TV is often very vanilla.

It’s why we feel the future of our filmed content belongs to the smaller and independent providers (and the Kit Wiliiamson’s of the world) with the support of the likes of Netflix who have always been in ‘our corner’.   Or even newer outlets such as SUBSTACK which accommodates writers, podcasters, videomakers, musicians, scientists, and culture-makers of all kinds  and who don’t just provide a platform for good queer work but also a revenue source too. I would normally have included YOU TUBE at this point, but recently some anonymous (homopohobic) boffin just took down our whole  Channel which had with some 2000 +videos,  for reasons which are stiil very unclear to me now  Plus if there is one major lesson from the current political chaos is that we so need to maintain control of our own stories.

So I am re-committing our QG team of reviewers to keep looking beyond the norm to bring us stories that  reflect the lives and aspirations of our queer family around the Globe.  Yes, the QG team are still watching Mid Century Modern BUT our hearts are all in  UNCONVENTIONAL 

PS You may also like to check out this interview we filmed with Kit and John in 2018 when
they were in Miami to collect yet another award….