Jason Ball, the 2017 Victorian Young Australian of the Year and an LGBTIQ and mental health advocate, was one of those kids. “We were basically the first country in the world to portray regular gay characters in a sympathetic light, so we’d done it all first 20 years beforehand, but what I underestimated was that for a new generation of gay kids that had never heard of Number 96, they found the American version of Queer as Folk quite revolutionary.” Mercado remembers Australia’s own ground-breaking show Number 96 introducing queer characters in 1972. “It had promiscuous gay men and gay men that wanted to marry and settle down, geeky gay men and older guys struggling to stay relevant in a youth-obsessed world and I think it will continue to be as relevant today as it was back then.” While Mercado notes it is now commonplace for shows to feature LGBTIQ characters, Queer as Folk’s specific focus on gay men allowed for a broader range of personalities. That included tackling issues like the struggle for marriage equality and devastating homophobic violence, including a bomb detonated at nightclub Babylon during an appearance by guest star Cyndi Lauper playing herself. “My first impression of the adaptation was that they toned stuff down for the more puritanical American market, but it eventually found its own way.” “I very much admired the bravery of the original and its ground-breaking depiction of gay men in the UK,” he says.
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Taking the original storyline and expanding on it, Gale Harold played the Stuart role, now named Brian, with Randy Harrison as his uncomfortably young lover Justin.įirst broadcast in Australia by SBS on Monday, July 1st 2002, TV historian Andrew Mercado devoured both iterations. Set in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but largely filmed in Toronto, it enjoyed a five-season run under producers Ron Cowen and Daniel Lipman. So much so that a US remake followed the next year.
The original eight-part series, launched in 1999, was an overnight hit. Starring Game of Thrones’ Aidan Gillen as advertising exec Stuart, his one night stand that stayed with underage Nathan ( Sons of Anarchy’s Charlie Hunnam), set tongues a wagging – probably even more so if the planned title Queer as Fuck had stuck. Before Welsh producer Russell T Davies successfully regenerated Doctor Who, he brought a forthright look at queer sex and friendship into unprepared British living rooms with Manchester-set drama Queer as Folk.