Limp old Cucumber

So, did you watch Cucumber - Channel 4's almost kinda flagship "gay" tv for the last 15 years?

Only it wasn't really, was it?

There was so much spout about how 1) it was a big, almost exclusively gay comedrama; and 2) that it was  Russell T Davies bring this about.

Somehow the gay community have Russell T Davies as our saviour, our solo commentator, our figurehead, our idol, our god. And it's a position he has not rejected - indeed, has almost created for himself with as much creativity as he has incorporated in his scripts.

Which isn't the case. There have been gay characters - indeed, every soap opera these days have gay characters; Eastenders has Johnny Carter and Danny Pennant; Emmerdale has Aaron Livesy and Robert Sugden; Coronation Street has Todd Grimshaw and Sean Tulley; Holoyoaks is practically all gay at one stage or another. They are in Casualty, Holby City, Broadchurch, Downton Abbey, all over.

(I had to Google a lot of these, I have no time for soaps)

But there are so many other dramas or comedies which involve a gay character which I'm not going to try to list because they are so many. They do however seem to ignore things like Beautiful People and Gimme Gimme Gimme (which ran around the same time as Queer as Folk) albeit both written by Jonathan Harvey.

The argument about Cucumber is that it is almost exclusive gay. This, apparently, has not been seen on British tv since Queer as Folk. We have to ignore Looking because it is American, and also only recent. We have to ignore the films such as Brokeback Mountain, A Single Man, A Beautiful Thing which are almost exclusively gay and very often British, but films. Indeed, we have to ignore "Vicious", an exclusive gay British comedy, presumably because it doesn't include drama. Or hasn't been written by Russell T Davies.

So, what we're weeding it down to is a tiny, tiny selection of British comedramas which are almost exclusively gay. Which is weird, because Britain isn't exclusively gay; no "real" community is exclusively gay; drama isn't "exclusively" gay. or "almost exclusively".

And the reason we don't need an exclusively or almost exclusively gay drama? Because we don't need an exclusively or almost exclusively gay drama. We are a part of society - or, at least in this country, nearly are entirely accepted. And what these comedramas do is reinforce our exclusion. Everyone has concentrated on how this is the first gay drama in 15 years - they haven't concentrated on all of those millions of gay characters or anyone that they aren't in love with as much as Russell T Davies - the Ian McKellen of the writing world; he who is so lovely and adorable and not at all as acerbic as Peter Tatchell.

Anyhow, this isn't a blog about media inclusions/portrayal of gays. This is specific to Cucumber and a comparison to Queer as Folk.

Because Queer as Folk was groundbreaking. So the expectations on Cucumber were similar.

Only ... it failed. Massively.

Let's be fair, it could never have been as groundbreaking as Queer as Folk, because Queer as Folk had broken that ground - the "gay" ground.

There is a question as to whether there is new ground to break, or whether the 15 years meantime mean that ground has been eroded. Let's face it, Queer as Folk introduced the nation to gay life and to threesomes, to underage sex, to drug use, to coming out, to going out to everything but normal gay life.

The problem that I have with it is that it does nothing that Queer as Folk doesn't do. In fact - one episode aside - it is a mirror of Queer as Folk.

They both start with this fantastically crazily absurdly fantastical episode which ticks as many of Channel 4's boxes as possible. Swearing - yes; nudity - yes; sex scenes - yes; drug use - yes.

And they aren't the only similarities. Unfortunately. They are so many. And it strikes a shard at Russell T Davies almost desperate reliance on his consistent shock factors that worked fifteen years ago but do not work today.

There is, obviously, the heavily reliance on Manchester - all that RTD knows. Canal Street. And - almost farcically - based around the most enormous loft apartments that Stuart could afford, but that there had to be some fantastical creation to engineer Freddie's predicament in the same space.

And the "age" thing. The worry about growing or being old - Queer as Folk barely went ten minutes without mentioning Nathan's 15 or 16 years old, or Stuart or Vince approaching 30; Cucumber has RTD's obsession with youth again with Freddie, Dean and Adam whilst obsessing similarly about Henry and Lance's age - how they are not scene any more. This age and age difference thing is omnipotent. Almost exclusive of any actual story. There are the underage sex references - Nathan, and Adam and Tomasz.

And yes - Adam. The nephew that gets used by RTD in the same way as the nephew in Queer as Folk outs Stuart.

There are the other basics - three main characters - Stuart, Vince and Nathan; Henry, Lance and Freddie. There are the add-ons - the Hazels and Cleos (we'll ignore Hazel's cameo in Cucumber, it's RTD basically jerking off in your face), the Camerons and the Daniels, the Dean and the Alexander. Let's not dwell to heavily on that - yeah there have been those such as Friends or Cold Feet that rely on many major characters, but even when you look back to Only Fools and Horses or Birds of a Feather they really rely on just those three major characters. So it's not exclusive.

There are the deaths - Phil and Lance. There are the "foreigners" - Cameron and Daniel.

There is the total lack of actual proper gay "masc" types. The closest that RTD has ever gotten to representing what are probably almost 50% of gay men is with Cliff - a barely seen character in Cucumber that adds very little except the occasional voice of reason.

And - similar to the age thing - is the desperation to show how down with the kids he is - how new tech. Remember Queers as Folk when an episode focused on him contacting people over the equivalent of chatrooms; then in Cucumber it has a brief Grindr reference with a massive vlogging reliance.

There are even two Lances - Lance who gets killed in Cucumber, Lance the emigrant who moves in with Romey in QAF.
I mean, for goodness sake, there are even two "running into the distance viewed over by cranes" moments; one where Vince runs away from Stuart's problem of Nathan; one where Henry runs away from Lance's place (there were probably more, I kept falling asleep).



And this ignores RTD's long, rambling elegies/eulogies/soliloquies/platitudes about how crap or amazing gay life is, about how coming out as gay is amazing or terrible, about gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay.

And it's boring.
There were differences - the older age matching RTD's; somehow he had managed to make the characters even flatter and unlikeable, the storylines even less believable or interestable. Sat the end of Queer As Folk you felt for Vince, you wanted good to become of him. At the end of Cucumber I didn't feel for anyone, I had no idea what, if any, story there was, I didn't understand what lesson or otherwise we were supposed to take away from it. I was just happy Tha it had ended.

The concentration on gay, the exclusion of almost all of the rest of society, is the absolute polar reverse of what gay society experiences. Maybe Cucumber was just trying to rebalance the previous imbalance, but that doesn't work in 2015.

What's worst is the gays didn't lap it up. Some did. Some of the gays loved it - almost exclusively because it was gay - they love gay things because they are gay things, irregardless of quality (those that fell outside of that loved it because of Freddie). And theirs were the opinions that got magnified, because that's what the media were desperate for - they had "bigged" it up so much, they were desperate for the success that it was all they could report - indeed because most tv reviewers are gay and desperate to advance their agenda. But - and this may be purely anecdotally - aside from the one episode where Lance got killed, all of the others were widely derided as being dated, fictional, farcical, unbelievable, unrepresentative and actually derogative.

Has it taken us further forwards? No. Has it advanced the cause? No. The risk is, it may have taken us back fifteen years.
And that's nothing to shout about.