Mark Lawson
Friday 16 January 2015 00.07 GMT
In 1999, an almost unknown TV screenwriter – Russell T Davies – introduced to British television an almost unshown subject: gay sex. Queer as Folk brought 3.5 million viewers to Channel 4, complaints to the TV regulator from Christian lobbyists and created such a buzz around Davies that the BBC entrusted him to rescue a retired Doctor Who from the universe of ridicule and transform it into a five-star franchise.
Next week, the writer-producer returns to his former network and his earlier subject, with a new drama about gay life in Manchester, which was premiered at the Barbican in London on Thursday night. Davies’ new series takes the unusual televisual form of a threesome.
One new drama, Cucumber, will run in Channel 4’s 9pm Thursday slot, with another, Banana, following at 10pm on digital channel E4, both supplemented by an on-demand top-up: Tofu, a set of short films in which the sexual recollections of actors and members of the public are intercut with short sexual playlets.
Whereas Queer as Folk was unlike anything previously seen, the new dramas inevitably include overlaps with that show and, as it proves, other dramatic franchises.
Cucumber is a sort of gay Cold Feet, dramatising middle-aged middle-class domestic crises: the protagonist, Henry Best (Vincent Franklin) panics when his partner of nine years suggests marriage. Although bound to be classified as gay drama, Cucumber belongs to the broader genre of respectability meltdown, as Henry is accelerated from smug dullness to scenes featuring police intervention, furious colleagues and social humiliation.
Banana has aspects of an all-male Hollyoaks, featuring teenagers, including 19-year-old Dean (Fisayo Akinade), struggling to find time amid the sex to have some work. In common with the characters, the two shows often interlock, with scenes from one being seen from an alternative perspective in the other.
The striking titles of the Cucumber-Banana-Tofu trilogy come from metaphors reportedly employed by sexologists for differing strengths of erection. Arriving for Thursday night’s screening, guests and critics found on their seats goodie bags of themed eatables. Most people seemed to have been given banana bread and candy bananas, although you sensed some men glancing across to see if the guy next to them had received something longer, tougher and green.
If Delia, Nigella or Heston mentions a particular foodstuff on TV, supermarkets soon sell out. So it will be intriguing to see if Davies’ shows empty grocers’ shelves of the titular vegetable, fruit and bean-curd alternative to meat. On balance, probably not, as anyone who watches the series may struggle to eat the items without choking. If the shows capture the imagination, Buckingham Palace may soon be using a different filling for garden party sandwiches and Wimbledon tennis players munching another sort of energy snack between sets.
Because Queer as Folk was made at a time when campaigners were fighting to reduce the age of gay sexual consent from 18 to 16, while Davies’ latest shows are screening in an era when men and women can legally marry each other, the new dramas seem unlikely to cause the fuss the earlier one did. Even so, they are notably sexually graphic: almost every scene in Cucumber and Banana involves someone trying or failing to have sex. Forget, at every level, Doctor Who: these series could have been called Mr Screw.
Although homosexuality is at some level defined by what happens genitally, Davies may be taking the risk of endorsing the cultural stereotype that for gay men the only hobby is the body. The dramas, however, offer many other pleasures.
Between the sex scenes are numerous touches confirming the writer’s absolute mastery of TV: the elegant way he uses the restaurant smoking ban to give two characters a chat outside, or a clever sequence in which it becomes completely credible that, despite everyone having the smartest phones, a series of key messages fails to reach Henry.
At least in their opening episodes, the shows have an optimistic feel: the only hint of homophobia is that Dean is estranged from puritanical parents. But the real cause for happiness is that one of the finest British TV writers is back dealing with real people rather than Time Lords from the planet Gallifrey.
• Cucumber is on Channel 4 at 9pm on 22 January.
Friday 16 January 2015 00.07 GMT
In 1999, an almost unknown TV screenwriter – Russell T Davies – introduced to British television an almost unshown subject: gay sex. Queer as Folk brought 3.5 million viewers to Channel 4, complaints to the TV regulator from Christian lobbyists and created such a buzz around Davies that the BBC entrusted him to rescue a retired Doctor Who from the universe of ridicule and transform it into a five-star franchise.
Next week, the writer-producer returns to his former network and his earlier subject, with a new drama about gay life in Manchester, which was premiered at the Barbican in London on Thursday night. Davies’ new series takes the unusual televisual form of a threesome.
One new drama, Cucumber, will run in Channel 4’s 9pm Thursday slot, with another, Banana, following at 10pm on digital channel E4, both supplemented by an on-demand top-up: Tofu, a set of short films in which the sexual recollections of actors and members of the public are intercut with short sexual playlets.
Whereas Queer as Folk was unlike anything previously seen, the new dramas inevitably include overlaps with that show and, as it proves, other dramatic franchises.
Cucumber is a sort of gay Cold Feet, dramatising middle-aged middle-class domestic crises: the protagonist, Henry Best (Vincent Franklin) panics when his partner of nine years suggests marriage. Although bound to be classified as gay drama, Cucumber belongs to the broader genre of respectability meltdown, as Henry is accelerated from smug dullness to scenes featuring police intervention, furious colleagues and social humiliation.
Banana has aspects of an all-male Hollyoaks, featuring teenagers, including 19-year-old Dean (Fisayo Akinade), struggling to find time amid the sex to have some work. In common with the characters, the two shows often interlock, with scenes from one being seen from an alternative perspective in the other.
The striking titles of the Cucumber-Banana-Tofu trilogy come from metaphors reportedly employed by sexologists for differing strengths of erection. Arriving for Thursday night’s screening, guests and critics found on their seats goodie bags of themed eatables. Most people seemed to have been given banana bread and candy bananas, although you sensed some men glancing across to see if the guy next to them had received something longer, tougher and green.
If Delia, Nigella or Heston mentions a particular foodstuff on TV, supermarkets soon sell out. So it will be intriguing to see if Davies’ shows empty grocers’ shelves of the titular vegetable, fruit and bean-curd alternative to meat. On balance, probably not, as anyone who watches the series may struggle to eat the items without choking. If the shows capture the imagination, Buckingham Palace may soon be using a different filling for garden party sandwiches and Wimbledon tennis players munching another sort of energy snack between sets.
Because Queer as Folk was made at a time when campaigners were fighting to reduce the age of gay sexual consent from 18 to 16, while Davies’ latest shows are screening in an era when men and women can legally marry each other, the new dramas seem unlikely to cause the fuss the earlier one did. Even so, they are notably sexually graphic: almost every scene in Cucumber and Banana involves someone trying or failing to have sex. Forget, at every level, Doctor Who: these series could have been called Mr Screw.
Although homosexuality is at some level defined by what happens genitally, Davies may be taking the risk of endorsing the cultural stereotype that for gay men the only hobby is the body. The dramas, however, offer many other pleasures.
Between the sex scenes are numerous touches confirming the writer’s absolute mastery of TV: the elegant way he uses the restaurant smoking ban to give two characters a chat outside, or a clever sequence in which it becomes completely credible that, despite everyone having the smartest phones, a series of key messages fails to reach Henry.
At least in their opening episodes, the shows have an optimistic feel: the only hint of homophobia is that Dean is estranged from puritanical parents. But the real cause for happiness is that one of the finest British TV writers is back dealing with real people rather than Time Lords from the planet Gallifrey.
• Cucumber is on Channel 4 at 9pm on 22 January.