There's Nowt So Queer...

Picture this: it is 1999, I am still at university, back - temporarily - in the closet, and this ground breaking television show comes along called Queer As Folk. I'm from a country where being out is barely discussed in private, let alone in the public arena, and on telly at that! What a revolutionary concept.

Anyway, today, while looking for a Gok Wan show (I know, sad) on 4oD I chance across QAF on-line. So, would the show have the same effect? Well, for one I am now much more out than then. At the time, when as far as I knew all my friends were straight, I had an incredible curiosity about what it was like to be out on the scene. Nowadays, I have no problems meeting my friends for an evening drink down on Old Compton Street, but at the time such a simple act would have been difficult on so many levels. Watching the show today, therefore, does not provide the same experience it originally did 9 years ago. 1999's joy of discovery, has given way, with the benefit of hindsight, to 2008's pseudo-anthropological study of the gay urban male.

At the time, for instance, I identified most greatly with the tragic Vince. Now, I identify with none of the major players, realizing that these roles are simply caricatures, grounded in a vague reality but taken to the extreme for the sake of plot and storyline. That said, the themes of parenthood, jealousy, sex, growing up and coming out are fairly universal and still resonate today. What I found interesting (as a self-professed geek) was the size of their - wait for it - mobile phones, the ugliness of their PCs and the fact that Vince uses IRC (internet relay chat)over a dial-up modem to hook up with a shag. How antiquated!

Anyway, as iconic a TV show as it is, I strongly recommend watching Queer As Folk, for old times' sake!