Up until now, gays in TV drama have been a glum old bunch. In soaps and other forms of serial drama, gay characters usually creak beneath the burden of the "issue-driven" story-lines imposed on them by screenwriters. But Queer as Folk aims to change all that. This new, eight-part drama starting on Channel 4 on Tuesday, is the first British series to centre exclusively on the subculture in which many gay men spend their lives. Set in Manchester's "gay village" around Canal Street, the series follows the lives of three men: rich, successful and popular Stuart (Irish actor Aidan Gillen), his quieter best friend Vince, and teenaged Nathan, who has just come out. Produced by the same team responsible for Hillsborough, it's an attempt to do for twenty-something gays what This Life did for their heterosexual equivalents, and promises a more realistic depiction of the lifestyle than has hitherto been seen on television.
Series writer Russell T. Davies is adamant that these characters haven't been created just to cover all the representational bases. "Someone once said to me, isn't it fantastic that there's a gay nurse in Casualty and I said `no'! 10 years ago, the character of Colin in EastEnders was marvellous, a first, but everything that's followed has just been a pale imitation. Gay characters invariably walk in with a subplot on their heads; `ooh, I've got AIDS, ooh I want to be a gay parent'. They do not exist as three-dimensional people, like the creators made a character decision that they were gay and just stopped there."
But, despite Davies's assertion that "you don't get those pressures on straight dramas. No one making Cracker decided they had to represent fat Scottish people before they cast Robbie Coltrane", Queer as Folk will inevitably be dissected as much for its socio-cultural accuracy as for its dramatic strengths or weaknesses.
The fairly late time-slot suggests that Channel 4 is anticipating complaints from viewers about sex and bad language, although ghetto-ising the series would seem to go against the intention behind producing a major drama in the first place.
Queer as Folk promises an unabashed depiction of gay lifestyles: "I worked it out once," says Vince at one point. "I've been friends with Stuart since we were 14 and now we're 29, so if you take an average of two shags a week, I reckon he's had 1,560 men. The bastard! I'm rubbish at copping off. I must've had, I dunno, 250? He's shagged a football stadium. I've shagged a medium-sized buffet."
Just the sort of thing to get Middle England reaching for its zapper, one might think, but not particularly racy by the standards of any regular Channel 4 viewer. The real test of Queer as Folk, however, will be whether it succeeds in creating believable characters and plot-lines that can involve audiences and keep them tuned in for the next eight weeks.
Queer as Folk starts on Tuesday at 10.30 p.m. on Channel 4