Uk gay series

Whether channel surfing or browsing streaming platforms, it is difficult to find a television programme airing in Britain that does not portray or involve gay or queer people in some shape or form. From long running soaps such as Coronation Street to boundary pushing series like Gay Educationgay and queer characters and relationships are ubiquitous on British television.

Moreover, many actors, directors, producers, and presenters are openly gay or queer. This is a remarkable feat considering legal and social proscriptions against homosexuality existed until at series the twenty-first century. This pride month, it is worth reflecting on this history and the many achievements and challenges along the way.

This article traces how gay people emerged on the small screen in non-fiction television programmes, from tentative pleas for tolerance in the s and s to bold challenges of gender and sexual norms in the s and s. It focuses primarily on gay men and lesbians as they were the central, and often sole, focus of television programmes on homosexuality in the twentieth century.

Watch an extract from 'Homosexuals' on YouTube.

Loud and Proud

When it aired, male homosexuality was illegal and men could face up to two years imprisonment for sexual relations with other men. Inthe Wolfenden Report had recommended the decriminalisation of homosexual acts between consenting men aged twenty-one and over in private. In this highly homophobic environment, homosexuality was rarely, if ever, explicitly discussed or represented on the series screen.

However, throughout the late s and s, there was a gradual shift in opinion among the press, public, and Parliament as knowledge about homosexuality and debates about its morality and legality became more widespread. The episode aimed to educate heterosexual society about the plight of homosexual men under gay contemporary law.

The presenter asked homosexual interviewees, whose faces were cast in shadows to protect their identity, questions about their experiences. The tone of the programme was serious and male homosexuals were constructed as lonely, sympathetic figures who were fundamentally normal people but lived a depressing existence searching for love, relationships, and family.

The episode compared Britain with Holland, where homosexuality was series among adults in private and men were free to live without fear of prosecution. Through this framing and comparison, the episode subtly called into question the contemporary British law criminalising homosexuality. Watch an extract from 'Lesbians' on YouTube.

Three months after their investigation into homosexuality, This Week aired the first non-fiction programme about lesbians in Britain. The episode emphasised the fundamental importance of love, rather than sex, in lesbian relationships. In JuneLiberal MP Leo Abse introduced a bill calling for the decriminalisation of homosexuality in private among men aged over twenty-one.

InAbse finally succeeded. One month before the law passed, sensing a shift in attitudes in favour of decriminalisation, the BBC current affairs programme Man Alive dedicated two episodes to the exploration of homosexuality among men and women. Like This WeekMan Alive was aimed at heterosexual society and highlighted the dangers the criminalisation of homosexuality posed to homosexual men, leaving them vulnerable to suicide, blackmail, and violence.

Unlike This Weekmost Man Alive interviewees showed their faces, indicating they felt the risk of prosecution had decreased on the eve of decriminalisation. Although the experiences of homosexuals were once again framed as pitiful and the fundamental normality of homosexual men and their relationships were emphasised, some interviewees demonstrated greater gay in breaking heteronormative conventions.

One week after their investigation into homosexual men, Man Alive turned to lesbians. The episode framed discrimination against lesbians for their appearance and behaviour as rampant. Although, like This Weekit emphasised that many lesbians and their relationships resembled heterosexual married couples, Man Alive gave more space to interviewees who broke gender conventions through adopting a masculine appearance.