Queer as Folk Information

Queer as Folk is a North American television series that was produced for Showtime Entertainment and Showcase by Cowlip Productions, Tony Jonas Productions, and Temple Street Productions in association with Channel 4 Television. It was developed and written by Ron Cowen and Daniel Lipman (Sisters, An Early Frost), who were the showrunners, and also the executive producers along with Tony Jonas, former President of Warner Bros. Television. Based on the British series created by Russell T Davies, Queer as Folk was the first hour-long drama on American television to portray the lives of gay men and women. Although it was set in Pittsburgh, PA, interior scenes were actually shot in Toronto and employed various Canadian directors known for their independent film work (including Bruce McDonald, David Wellington, Kelly Makin, John Greyson, Jeremy Podeswa and Michael DeCarlo) as well as Australian director Russell Mulcahy (Highlander) who directed the pilot episode. Additional writers in the later seasons included Michael MacLennan, Efrem Seeger, Brad Fraser, Del Shores, and Shawn Postoff.

Show premise

The series follows the lives of five gay men living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Brian, Justin, Michael, Emmett, and Ted; a lesbian couple, Lindsay and Melanie; and Michael's mother Debbie and his uncle Vic. Another main character, Ben, was added in the second season.

Show history

The show drew strong ratings for both Showtime and Canada's Showcase. In fact, in Canada, the series had such high ratings that by the end of the fifth season Showcase chose to air the show in hour-and-ten-minute timeblocks to accommodate all the ads without cutting any scenes. This was not a problem for Showtime, since that service is commercial-free and no ads were ever broadcast during a Queer as Folk telecast.

The series ran for five seasons (2000 to 2005 on Showtime and 2001 to 2005 on Showcase).

Canada's Showcase, which was making a great deal of money from the advertising demand, did briefly consider producing a sixth season, but as Showtime owned much of the rights to the series and funded much of the budget, Showcase decided against it.

Another U.S. cable channel owned by Viacom, Logo, began broadcasting edited, commercially sponsored episodes of Queer as Folk on September 21, 2006.

As of January 9, 2008, Showcase began offering the Canadian version of the Queer as Folk episodes on their website. These Canadian versions differ from the Showtime and DVD versions in that they have breaks within the episodes (where commercials would have been inserted) and make references to "Showcase" and "Temple Street Productions presents" instead of "Showtime presents". Unlike the Season 1 DVDs, episodes 101 and 102 are presented separately and episode 102 is the rare extended version of the episode, created for broadcast during reruns of the first season and not seen since 2002. The first seven episodes were posted on January 9 and one additional episode was posted each week after.

Character profiles

Main characters

Name	Actor	UK counterpart: Character (Actor)	Description
Brian Kinney	Gale Harold	Stuart Alan Jones (Aidan Gillen)	Brian Kinney: a veritable sex machine. At 29 years old, he is living life for the now. He is his own man and believes in having sex for the sheer joy of doing it. While he and Justin have an on-and-off-again relationship, Justin is the only one of his sexual encounters that Brian finds himself falling in love with and the only one he continues to have sex with after the first night. He makes his living as an advertising executive for Vangard, and later on builds his own company, Kinnetik, which was named by Justin. While he purports himself as not part of the gay and lesbian community, he will do what he can to protect his fellow gay man or woman. His motto when it comes to straight people: "There are two kinds of straight people in the world, those that hate you to your face and those who hate you behind your back."
Justin Taylor	Randy Harrison	Nathan Maloney (Charlie Hunnam)	Justin loses his virginity to Brian at the age of seventeen and falls in love with him. He runs away from home after coming out of the closet, primarily because his father is not accepting of his sexuality. Nicknamed "Sunshine" by Debbie because of his bright smile and cheery disposition, Justin is queer-bashed at the end of Season 1, resulting in Brian taking him in during Season 2. A talented artist, Justin briefly contemplates attending business school to appease his father but ultimately decides to attend art school to become a visual artist. He and Brian further their relationship over the five seasons eventually ending in a marriage proposal. Justin says yes, but Brian tells him to go to New York to pursue his art because he would be more successful there than he would be in Pittsburgh.
Michael Novotny	Hal Sparks	Vince Tyler (Craig Kelly)	Brian's best friend since adolescence, Michael secretly harbours feelings for him. He enjoys reading comic books, particularly Captain Astro adventures. He starts the series as a manager at a K-Mart-like department store, the Big Q, but eventually follows his dream of opening a comic book store. From Season 2, he and Justin create the comic book Rage which was based on Brian as the character Rage, Justin as JT (Justin Taylor) who's Rage's lover/sidekick and Michael as Zephyr, Rage's best friend/sidekick. After a somewhat stormy relationship with older Dr. David Cameron during season 1, Michael finds himself in a long-term relationship with Ben Bruckner, an HIV-positive college professor, beginning in season 2; Michael and Ben eventually marry near the end of season 4.
Emmett Honeycutt	Peter Paige	Alexander Perry (Antony Cotton)	Originally from Hazlehurst, Mississippi, Emmett is the most flamboyant of the group. He goes through several jobs, including shopkeeper at a clothing store called Torso, porn star, naked maid, party planner, and correspondent for a local news station, as well as a number of relationships during the course of the series.
Ted Schmidt	Scott Lowell	Phil Delaney (Jason Merrells)	An accountant with a low self-esteem who envies Brian's lavish lifestyle, Ted is constantly rejected by men at gay clubs around Pittsburgh and eventually struggles with an addiction to crystal meth. He is a few years older than Michael, Brian and Emmett. He has a relationship in Season 3 with Emmett, as well as an on-again-off-again relationship with Blake.
Lindsay Peterson	Thea Gill	Romey Sullivan (Esther Hall)	Brian's close friend since college who becomes the mother of his child Gus, Lindsay works as an art teacher but takes time off to care for her son. Lindsay's WASP parents are ashamed of her homosexuality and her partnership with Melanie.
Melanie Marcus	Michelle Clunie	Lisa Levene (Saira Todd)	Lindsay's Jewish lover who works as a lawyer, Melanie dislikes Brian, partially because Lindsay is very affectionate towards him, but she becomes friendlier towards him in later seasons. She carries her and Lindsay's second child, Jenny Rebecca, whose biological father is Michael.
Ben Bruckner	Robert Gant		A college professor who becomes Michael's long-term partner from Season 2 onwards, Ben also lives with HIV. Michael's mother Debbie disapproves of their relationship at first, because she fears that her son will become infected, but eventually she realizes that Michael loves Ben and so accepts him.
Debbie Novotny	Sharon Gless	Hazel Tyler (Denise Black)	An active PFLAG member, Debbie is fiercely proud of her son Michael's homosexuality, to the extent of making him embarrassed about it. She treats all the boys as her own family, especially Justin, who briefly lives with her after he runs away from home. She is also one of the people who sees past Brian's cockiness for what he really is. She works at the Liberty Diner and, at home, she takes care of her ill brother Vic.
Vic Grassi	Jack Wetherall	Bernard Thomas (Andy Devine)	To help Debbie pay the bills, Vic starts work as a chef at her diner. He also works as a caterer for Emmett's event planning business. Not long after an altercation with Debbie in Season 4, he dies of AIDS complications.

Secondary characters

Name	Actor	UK counterpart	Description
Dr. David Cameron	Chris Potter	Cameron Roberts (Peter O'Brien)	(Season 1) Michael's boyfriend during Season 1. After falling off a ladder, Michael has therapy done with David, who is a chiropractor. Their relationship evolves quickly, and in a few months Michael moves in with David and meets his son, though David and Michael's relationship is not without its problems, due largely to David's controlling nature. There is friction between David and Brian, since David is jealous of Brian's relationship with Michael.
James "Hunter" Montgomery	Harris Allan		(Seasons 3-5) Hunter is an HIV-positive teenage hustler who meets Ben and Michael while standing outside their apartment. Ben feels sorry for Hunter and takes him in. Eventually he and Michael adopt him. Hunter initially has an unrequited crush on Brian, but later falls in love with a girl named Callie Leeson.
Jennifer Taylor	Sherry Miller	Janice Maloney (Caroline O'Neill)	Jennifer is Justin's mother and works as a real estate agent. After initially having difficulty with her son's coming out, she embraces the fact that her son is gay with Debbie's help, joining PFLAG. After divorcing Craig Taylor, she dates a younger man named Tucker (Lucas Bryant) in Season 5, much to Justin's disapproval.
Carl Horvath	Peter MacNeill	PC Stroud (Dave Nicholls)	(Seasons 2-5) Debbie's boyfriend. He meets Debbie while working on a case involving the murder of a young gay man named Jason Kemp. He is slightly homophobic when Debbie first meets him, but she teaches him to be more accepting of homosexuals. He asks Debbie to marry him, which she accepts, but later decides that she cannot marry Horvath as long as Michael cannot legally marry. Instead, the couple decides to live together in common-law.
Chris Hobbs	Alec McClure	Christian Hobbs (Ben Maguire)	(Seasons 1, 2 and 4) Bully from Justin's school. Justin gave him a handjob in the first few episodes of the series, but then he turned out to be a closeted and crazy homophobe, capable of doing anything to prove his lie.
Cynthia	Stephanie Moore	Sandra Docherty (Alison Burrows)	Brian's assistant. Quits Vangard to follow Brian when he starts his own firm, Kinnetic. Charming enough to dazzle clients, and firm enough to handle Brian.
Blake Wyzecki	Dean Armstrong	Harvey Black (Andrew Lancel)	A crystal meth addict at the time he meets Ted at Babylon. His relationship with Ted ends quickly after Ted finds out that Blake is still hooked on drugs. In Season 4, he is sober and is Ted's counselor at a rehab clinic. They finally reunite in the series finale.
Daphne Chanders	Makyla Smith	Donna Clark (Carla Henry)	Justin's best friend since high school, and the first person Justin comes out to (not counting Brian or Michael). She asks Justin to take her virginity since he has experience, and as a result falls in love with him. He quickly turns her down, but they remain friends. Later, they move in together.
Leda	Nancy Anne Sakovich		(Season 2)
Ethan Gold	Fabrizio Filippo	Dazz Collinson (Jonathon Natynczyk)	(Seasons 2-3) Music student at PIFA who romances Justin. Feeling neglected by Brian, Justin leaves him for Ethan. It is a short-lived relationship, however, as Ethan cheats on Justin with a fan. Justin leaves him because he had vowed to be faithful and Justin never expected that with Brian, so he reunites with Brian.
Drew Boyd	Matt Battaglia		(Seasons 4-5) A star quarterback who, although engaged, is a closeted homosexual. He has an affair with Emmett and later leaves his wife to be with him, although they do not stay together. Drew comes out to the media with a controversial on-air kiss with Emmett.
PC Jim Stockwell	David Gianopoulos		(Season 3) A mayoral candidate, with Brian as head of his ad campaign. Stockwell is a homophobic police officer who abuses his authority. Initially Brian helps with the campaign, but at a certain point, he decides to mess the campaign, with Justin's help, as Stockwell's closing the gay nightclubs. Brian launches a smear campaign, and as a result, Stockwell loses the election and is indicted.
Gardner Vance	Carlo Rota		(Seasons 2-4) Brian's senior partner at the advertising agency. He buys Ryder's from the previous owner and christens it Vangard, firing every single ad exec but Brian"?who proves himself indispensable by going after and signing up the Brown Athletics account that Vance had been after for years. Brian becomes and stays partner after this, until the Stockwell smear campaign in season 3 which results in his getting fired.
Sam Auerbach	Robin Thomas		(Season 4) A renowned artist who is notoriously difficult to deal with. He is instantly attracted to Lindsay and pursues her even though she is a lesbian. After his Pittsburgh art exhibit (which Lindsay organized), Lindsay gives in and they have a brief tryst at the gallery.
Cody Bell	Mitch Morris		(Season 4) Leads the "pink posse", and convinces Justin to join.
Tracey	Lindsey Connell	Rosalie Cotter (Caroline Pegg)	(Seasons 1-3) Worked with Michael at the Big Q. She had strong feelings for him, and was devastated to find out that he was gay but eventually remained his friend. After Michael left the Big Q to start his comic book store, Tracey made several appearances, including when Ted interviews for the store's assistant bookkeeper position in season 3.
Callie Leeson	Meredith Henderson		(Seasons 4-5) Hunter's high school friend and at one point, girlfriend. When she finds out that he has two fathers and is HIV positive, she is surprisingly not worried. Her parents embarrass Hunter at a swim meet when he hits his head in the pool and begins to bleed. When Callie rushes to the pool to help him, her father shouts that he "has AIDS". The entire room hears, and soon the entire school knows. Callie remains a friend of Hunter and appears occasionally for the duration of the series.
Brett Keller	Mike Shara		(Seasons 4-5) Hollywood movie producer who offers to produce a movie version of Rage.
Loretta Pye	Rosie O'Donnell		(Season 5) Deb's replacement after she quits the diner so she and Carl may spend more time together. Loretta applies for the job with no prior experience but convinces Deb to hire her when she tells Deb that she was kicked out of her house by her abusive husband because he caught her making out with her best friend, a woman. After Loretta works at the diner for a couple of weeks, her husband comes to take her home. When she refuses, he tries to drag her out but Deb comes to the rescue, threatening him with a baseball bat. Afterwards, Loretta and Deb become friends but things go awry when Loretta kisses Deb while they are out for drinks. Deb eventually lets Loretta down gently and Loretta decides to leave town, saying that she loves Deb too much to be anywhere near her.

Plot

The first episode finds the four friends ending a night at Babylon, a popular gay club. Brian picks up and has sex with Justin, who falls in love with him and eventually becomes more than a one-night-stand. Brian also becomes a father that night, bearing a son with Lindsay through artificial insemination.

Michael's seemingly unrequited love for Brian fuels the story, which he occasionally narrates in voice-over. Justin's coming out and budding relationship with Brian has unexpected effects on Brian and Michael's lives much to Michael's dismay as Justin is only 17 years old. Justin confides in his straight high-school friend Daphne, while struggling to deal with homophobic classmates and his dismayed, divorcing parents, Craig and Jennifer. Later in the second season Justin and Michael co-create the sexually explicit underground comic Rage, featuring a "Gay Crusader" superhero based on Brian.

Brian's son Gus, being raised by Lindsay and Melanie, becomes the focus of several episodes as issues of parental rights come to the fore. Ted is Melanie's accountant who once harbored a longstanding crush on Michael. He and Emmett begin as best friends, but briefly become lovers later in the series. Their relationship ends as Ted, unemployed and with a criminal record earned from running a legitimate porn website that was targeted by a Chief of Police running for Mayor, becomes addicted to crystal meth. In the fourth season, Brian, who has lost his job by assisting Justin in opposing an anti-gay political client, starts his own agency. Michael marries Ben Bruckner, an HIV-positive college professor, and the couple adopts a teenage son, James "Hunter" Montgomery, who is also HIV-positive as a result of his experiences as a young hustler.

Ted's affair with a handsome crystal meth addict, Blake Wyzecki, sets the pattern for Ted's later tragic but ultimately redeeming experiences with drug addiction.

Melanie and Lindsay's relationship, while on the surface seeming more of a "stable" relationship, is actually quite tumultuous and controversial. Each cheats on the other at various points in the series; both tackle on a threesome shortly after they marry and become separated for much of the 4th and 5th seasons. Melanie is impregnated by Michael (through artificial insemination, as Lindsay was) in the third season, so that best friends Brian and Michael become co-fathers to Lindsay and Melanie's children. Melanie gives birth to a girl, Jenny Rebecca, over whom Melanie, Lindsay, and Michael have a brief legal custody battle following the women's transitory break-up. Brian's new advertising agency, Kinnetik, becomes highly successful both through a combination of Brian's customer loyalty and his edgier advertising. As a result of this, Brian is able to purchase Club Babylon from its bankrupt owner.

In the fifth and final season the boys have become men, and the series, perhaps more comfortable in its role in gay entertainment, tackles political issues head-on and with much more fervor.

A political campaign called "Proposition 14" is depicted during much of the final season as a looming threat to the main characters. This proposition, like so many real-life recent legislative moves that have affected many U.S. states, threatens to outlaw same-sex marriage, adoption and other family civil rights. The many ways in which such a proposition would affect the characters are depicted through nearly every episode. Debbie, Justin, Jennifer, Daphne, Emmett, Ted, Michael, Ben, Lindsay, Melanie and the children are depicted standing up and fighting against this proposition both by active canvassing, political contributions and other democratic processes, but are met with staunch opposition, discrimination, outright hatred and political setbacks.

The show climaxes near the end of the series when a benefit to support opposition to Proposition 14 hosted at Brian's club Babylon (after repeated relocations of the benefit, due to discrimination) is attacked by a bomb that initially kills 4, and eventually another 3 and injures 67.

This horrible event sets the bittersweet tone for the final three episodes, in which Brian, frightened by this third possible loss of Justin, finally declares his love for him. The two even plan to marry, but Justin's artistic abilities get noticed by a New York art critic and the two decide, for the time being at least, in favor of a more realistic approach to a stormy relationship that nevertheless works for their characters. Melanie and Lindsay, realizing they have more in common than they don't, resume their relationship but relocate to Canada to "raise [their children] in an environment where they will not be called names, singled out for discrimination, or ever have to fear for their life."

Emmett becomes a Queer-Eye type TV presenter but is later fired when professional football player Drew Boyd kisses him on the news to signify his coming out. Ted confronts his midlife crisis head-on and finally reunites with Blake. Hunter returns and the Novotny-Bruckner family perseveres.

The series came full circle with the final scenes staged in the restored Babylon nightclub. In the final scene, Brian dances to Heather Small's "Proud," a song that accompanied a pivotal scene between Brian and Michael in the very first episode of the series. It ends with a final narration by Michael:

"So the "thumpa thumpa" continues. It always will. No matter what happens. No matter who's president. As our lady of Disco, the divine Miss Gloria Gaynor has always sung to us: We will survive."

Cultural implications

The American version of Queer as Folk quickly became the number one show on the Showtime roster. The network's initial marketing of the show was primarily targeted at gay male (and to some extent, lesbian) audiences, yet a sizeable segment of the viewership turned out to be heterosexual women.

Groundbreaking scenes abounded in Queer as Folk, beginning with the first episode, containing the first simulated explicit sex scene between two men shown on American television (including mutual masturbation, anal sex, and rimming), albeit more tame than the scene it was based on in the UK version. Despite the frank portrayals of drug use and casual sex in the gay club scene, the expected conservative uproar never materialized.

Initially, most of the actors kept their real-life sexual orientations ambiguous in the press so as not to detract from their characters, causing much speculation among the viewing audience. Since that time, Randy Harrison, Peter Paige, Robert Gant and Jack Wetherall have stated that they are gay, Thea Gill has stated she is bisexual, and the rest of the cast have stated they are straight (i.e., Gale Harold, Scott Lowell, Michelle Clunie, and Hal Sparks) but have for the most part avoided public discussion of their orientation.

Controversial storylines which have been explored in Queer as Folk have included the following: coming out, same-sex marriage, ex-gay ministries, recreational drug use and abuse (cocaine, methamphetamine, ecstasy, GHB, ketamine, cannabis); gay adoption, artificial insemination; vigilantism; gay-bashing; safe sex, HIV-positive status, underage prostitution; actively gay Catholic priests; discrimination in the workplace based on sexual orientation, the internet pornography industry, and bug chasers (HIV-negative individuals who actively seek to become HIV-positive).

The series was set in the city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which it depicted with a good deal of creative license. Pittsburgh was chosen as the closest parallel to the UK series' industrial setting of Manchester, England. However, since Pittsburgh does not have a large gay district like San Francisco or New York, almost all of the Liberty Avenue scenes were filmed in and around the Church and Wellesley area of Toronto which is that city's gay village. In fact, not a single shot of the real Liberty Avenue was ever used in the series. Toronto was chosen as the production center of the series because of its lower cost of production and established mature television and film industry. And, as it happens, Toronto's gay village had the look the producers needed to bring their vision of Liberty Avenue alive.

Woody's, the central bar in this fantasy Pittsburgh, is the name of a leading gay bar in Toronto, whose real exterior was shot with only minor disguise. (In a Season 4 episode in which several characters travelled to Toronto, the real Woody's was dubbed "Moosie's".) Babylon was also the name of a real gay bar in Toronto, which was open during the show's run but subsequently closed, although the real establishment was a sitdown martini bar; the dance club scenes in the series were actually filmed at a different Toronto nightclub, Fly.

The series, at times, made humorous reference to its image in the gay community. A few episodes featured the show-within-a-show Gay as Blazes, a dull, politically correct drama which Brian particularly disagreed with, and which was eventually cancelled.

Filming and production

Queer as Folk was produced by Cowlip Productions, Tony Jonas Productions and Temple Street Productions in association with Channel 4 Television Corporation (the co-owner of the original UK series) and Showcase. Warner Bros. Television holds the international distribution rights to the series outside the US and Canada (where Showtime Entertainment/CBS Television Distribution owns the rights).

The show's original theme song, "Spunk", was written and performed by Greek Buck and was used during seasons one through three. When the main title sequence for the show was changed for seasons four and five, the theme song was changed to "Cue the Pulse to Begin" performed by Burnside Project. However, as a tip-of-the-hat to Greek Buck, the count-in from "Spunk" was left in the new opening sequence before "Cue the Pulse to Begin" was played.

All five seasons were filmed in wide-screen HDTV; however, only seasons 4 and 5 were regularly broadcast in HDTV in both the U.S. and Canada. In the U.S., Showtime did run Seasons 1, 2 and 3 in HDTV on Tuesday nights as a special repeat of an episode's full-screen broadcast the previous Sunday. These HDTV broadcasts from the first three seasons were not broadcast by Showcase in Canada. The episodes that appear in the commercially released DVD packages were taken from the HDTV versions.

Keeping up with the technology, Queer as Folk's Season 5 was one of the first series to be recorded using the relatively new digital video process rather than being made exclusively on film. The raw digital video was combined with some scenes that were filmed into a finished episode and then color corrected using a computer process to make the entire episode appear to be filmed.

Throughout all five seasons, the series was filmed primarily at Dufferin Gate Studios in Etobicoke, Ontario (a southwestern borough of Toronto). Exterior scenes however were shot in Pittsburgh.

Many of Season 3's non-location scenes of Babylon, Woody's and Liberty Diner were filmed at Greystone Studios in Mississauga (the city adjacent to Toronto's western border).

These same scenes for seasons 4 and 5 were filmed at the now-former Dufferin Gate Studios "B Studio" in Mississauga about 10"15 minutes from Dufferin Gate's home in Etobicoke. (This studio is now used by Shaftesbury Films as the home base for several of its projects, including the series The Listener).

The series finale of Queer as Folk originally included additional scenes (some new and some extended from their final presentation) that put the episode's running time to just under 64 minutes. This extra material was deleted from the episode before it was broadcast presumably because Showtime didn't want the program to run longer than 60 minutes. The final edit of the episode is slightly over 58 minutes. The deleted scenes are presented in the Queer as Folk Season 5 DVD package. The most notable deletion was a scene near the end of the episode that pays homage to the series' first episode. In the deleted scene, a young blond-haired gay teen who looks like Justin is seen on Liberty Avenue, obviously for his first time, and as Justin did in the first episode, steps across Liberty Avenue and splashes through a puddle. This was meant to signify that the series had come full circle. It was ultimately deleted because the idea of "full circle" was already present in the final Michael-Brian scene (which preceded the deleted scene) and the use of the remix of "Proud" as the series' closing theme.

International release

• Europe:
  • In Norway, the first season started om March 31, 2006, on Canal Digital [[CANAL+]].
  • In the United Kingdom, season 1 was broadcast by the BBC on its digital channel BBC Choice in 2002. Seasons 3 and 4 were broadcast by Channel 4's digital channel E4 in an unpromoted post-midnight slot (Channel 4 were the broadcasters of the British series). While the BBC still holds the rights to season 2, it has never been broadcast since BBC Choice was rebranded BBC Three and its remit was changed. All five seasons have been released on DVD in the UK; Series 1 and 2 were first released exclusively through HMV, but are now also available in box-set and separate at Amazon.
  • In Romania the show started airing in late 2008 on a gay themed network, Purple TV.
  • In Poland the show is airing from March 1, 2010, on nFilmHD at 11.00 PM.

• Asia:
  • In Israel the show was aired on Channel 3 and yes stars channels. Currently the show reruns on HOT3. Due to linguistic problems, it was renamed ""?"?? "???? ???" ("Hachi Ge'im SheYesh"; lit. "Proud As Can Be").

Episodes

Soundtracks

See also

• Queer as Folk (UK TV series)