Noah's Arc: Season 1

Noahs Arc- the complete first season is great New series from Logo network. This series is a refreshing and new comedy about four African-American Gay men and there relationships with there lovers. Its a great new comedy! I fell instantly in love with the series and the characters.

I definitely will buy as many series from this collection as offered!

This series begins with four good friends. First guy, a HIV prevention expert. Second a promiscuous club boy who just wants to have fun. The third, a stiff professor; and the fourth, Noah, who seems to keep all these friends together.

To find out more, watch Queer as folk final season SNEAK-PEEKS! I did and bought Noahs Arc- The First season as soon as it came out. This new series is WORTH IT!

Noah's Arc is a fun, gay comedy from the Logo Network. It was recommended to me by friends because of my love for Queer as Folk and Sex and the City, and it has the most hilarious elements of both but with an entirely different spin. Logo promotes the show as Sex and the City meets Soul Food, and they're on the mark.

The players:
Noah - a struggling screenwriter and incurable romantic
Alex - a sassy HIV educator
Ricky - hot body, promiscuous, avoids monogamy like the plague
Chance - uptight college professor

Noah, the lead character, is played as an ultra-femme gay man with a voice that's slightly reminiscent of Michael Jackson. He is basically the "Carrie" of the group with the fashion sense and money problems to prove it. His best friends form a tight-knit group with Ricky as the sex fiend "Samantha," Chance as the prim and proper "Charlotte," and though Alex isn't really as cynical as "Miranda" at least he's a professional.

This show is just a bit over the top with the characters playing their roles as black gay men a little stereotypically at times, but it works. In just the first five episodes they deal with issues like a boyfriend who needs a bit of "thug love," cybersex coming between a relationship, whether or not a certain guy might be gay--and how to find out for sure. This DVD set includes 9 episodes and special features like deleted scenes, 2 short films, auditions, extended scenes, and commentary. I highly recommend watching the episodes with the extended scenes enabled if you haven't seen this show yet.

With equal parts drama and comedy, I can't wait to see what Noah and the boys have in store for next season.

There's quite a lot I could say about this series on DVD, about the lives of four black gay friends and their respective romantic and sexual partners but I've decided to say just a little and, in the main, be supportive. Not just towards "Noah's Arc" director, Patrik-Ian Polk but also to the actors and technical crew who obviously worked very hard to put this series together and, more importantly, towards black gay programming and filmmaking in general. I can only speak for myself and as a black gay man but I know I remain hungry for representation on the big and small screen, hungry to the point where it doesn't always matter whether said representation is realistic and positive, or not. This series may only be available on a subscription only cable channel in the US and may not be available to watch on any channel in this country for a long time to come (if ever) but it's a start. No matter what I might feel about certain aspects of this series, as a whole it's definitely groundbreaking stuff. Polk is a pioneer.

I winced quite a lot through the first episode or so but after that, I began to feel that the actors were really getting into a rhythm, gelling as a unit and that the storylines, though a bit short on depth, really began to show heart and humour, while at the same time managing to tackle some very important issues that as black gay men, we can often find very difficult to talk about. I particularly liked the way the HIV issue was dealt with and I have to say I don't think I've ever seen it done in a more accurate or helpful way. Not even on shows like "ER" or "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit", which, for obvious reasons, have raised the issue more than a few times in the past.

All in all, I liked it and, mainly thanks to the way some of the storylines have been cleverly left unresolved, I genuinely look forward to the next season being released on DVD. And while I feel that characters like Perry in "Brother To Brother" or even Omar and his cohorts in "The Wire" (if you discount the criminality) are a lot closer to my reality and experience as a black gay man than any of the characters in this show, I do know we're not all the same. I do recognise that many black gay men will identify with the character in "Noah's Arc". Thus, I think every black gay man should have a copy, even if just for laughs.

But even if you're not black or gay but would like to get a handle on one man's perspective, (albeit, I suspect, largely drawn from fantasy), on what it means to be young, black and gay in that soup-plate of superficiality otherwise known as Los Angeles in the 21st century, you should definitely check this one out.

Great music by Meshell Ndegeocello though. As always.

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