Why Russell T. Davies ‘Queer As Folk’ for a new generation is way past its sell-by date.
I found the characters annoying and vapid; I found the non-starting storylines frustrating (remember episode one when that guy committed suicide because of Henry and it was never mentioned again, apart from when the grieving widow came in to the office to spout a load of homophobic slurs at Henry?); and I found the whole series had an unsavoury nastiness to it that was hard to shake off. Characters who had supposedly been friends for years talked to each other like they’d only just met. Actually that’s not quite it; they talk at each other. Where’s the warmth, the tenderness, the gaiety?
I watched the first five episodes assuming that everyone shared my frustrations, but then episode 6 was broadcast and suddenly the Internet was buzzing with people telling me I’d got it wrong. The episode was ‘harrowing’, ‘moving’, ‘a game-changer’. Apparently it had gotten good. I took a bit of comfort from that. I just needed to watch episode 6 and everything would click into place. Maybe I’d missed the point, and this would set the record straight.
Episodes 1-5 essentially lay the groundwork for that climactic moment. Structurally episode 6 creates a zinger of a turning point – a death usually does. Nothing will be the same for Henry, the main character now. But in an 8-episode run I’m wondering if this should perhaps have come a little earlier. We’ve had five episodes of build up, which comprises mainly of characters exploring the quirks of gay sexuality – mainly by talking about them, occasionally by acting them out – but never really exploring the consequences of their actions. Lance’s murder offers us the chance to look at his behaviour and empathise. We ask ourselves what we would do in his situation, whether we would make the same choices as he did. That’s what audiences want, and that’s why the event got such a huge reaction on social media. But if that’s what good drama is then every episode should have moments like this, moments when we can see past the surface and into the true heart of the characters, and ask questions of ourselves in the process.
So, back to the series so far..In episode 1 Henry and Lance go their separate ways romantically, and then barely speak to each other for the rest of the series. We find out how they individually cope with singledom, but there’s no sense of what’s been lost in becoming single. They just… Move on. Until episode 5. That’s a lot of time to spend on their infatuations and not much time on the relationship supposedly at the heart of the series.
Russell T. Davies has said in interviews that it took a lot of courage to kill off his character… That it was something he’d always wanted to do, but that it was hard. To me that speaks volumes, not about writing the murder itself, but about the rest of the series.
A writer needs to give his characters a hard time, to challenge them in both big sequences like this, and in smaller ones leading up to and following it. If a character isn’t challenged, the audience won’t care. Up to this point Davies has been playing it safe. In one episode Henry’s sister discovers that her brother has essentially been pimping out her son on YouTube. She’s a bit angry, but then she just… forgives him and asks if he’s OK. A big relief for Henry; not so juicy for us. This is why I have a problem with Henry. None of the potentially devastating events in his life (losing his job, losing his boyfriend, losing his home…) seemed to affect him, at least not profoundly. I didn’t warm to him because of that. If he doesn’t care about those things, why should we? The fact he forgets his problems by chasing his fantasies may be incredibly realistic, but it doesn’t make great drama.
There’s also something self-congratulatory in that Davies interview. Like the murder was something he’d crowbarred into the story as a challenge to himself. The episode was full of powerful moments, but very little tied in to the story as a whole (a lot of it was in flashback). The episode felt stand-alone, added-on.
So… Lance has been murdered and the person Henry shared years of his life with has been cruelly taken away. Man, shit is gonna get real now, right?! How will Henry cope? Will he go off the rails? Will he have a breakdown?
In episode 7 the answer is… No. There’s a funeral, he cries, he fights about money with Lance’s sister, and then he trawls the streets of Manchester looking for a man he’s briefly seen on Grindr. This is a neat reflection of Henry’s character (what does he do when someone gets too close for comfort? He runs away and looks for someone else), but it’s also frustrating because it denies us what we want to see within the context of the story. We want to see the fall-out, we don’t want to see his coping strategy, because we’ve already seen that. We want the breaking point. We don’t even see Lance’s murderer again in the series. Characters just talk about what a bastard he is instead.
The final thing I’ll mention briefly is the dialogue. ‘Clever’ dialogue. My friend put it perfectly when she said ‘you can really see the script’. Nobody talks like that in real life, and TV is supposed to be naturalistic. If Cucumber had been a play the amount of dialogue, the use of extended monologues etc would have worked. But not on the telly. Not for me, anyway. And a lot of emotional impact was lost through the constant zup zup soundtrack running underneath the action, presumably a shortcut to make the show feel contemporary and fresh.
Ultimately I feel that Cucumber had great intentions, but the idea was poorly executed. It felt more like a series of observations about the gay world than a commentary on what life is currently about for middle-aged gay men. There were moments of clarity, but little to love. Perhaps the script editors were afraid to give too much feedback to an established writer, but we’ll never know. A wasted opportunity.
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