From Amazon.co.uk
Television has become so much a part of our lives that it rarely surprises us anymore, so when a series like
Queer as Folk comes along--truly shocking and genuinely touching--it's an event to be remembered. Originally broadcast as eight half-hour episodes on Channel 4,
QAF follows the lives of three men through life, love and all the travails of such in Manchester. That the protagonists are all gay--and Nathan (Charlie Hunnam) is just 15 years old--is treated as matter of course, and were it not for the fact that every character who is introduced is so vividly realised, it would be the only point. The ultimate triumph of
QAF is not that the explicit, explosive subject matter is handled (mostly) tastefully, or that it made it on screen at all--it's that the characters are so intriguing that the unflinching looks at sex and relationships almost fade completely into the background.
The series certainly starts with a bang: in the first episode, young Nathan is deflowered, Stuart (Aiden Gillen) becomes a father and Vince (Craig Kelly) pines away with an unrequited love that quickly establishes itself as the series' main theme. (That Vince spends half of QAF with a boyfriend complicates the situation some.) Nathan has already come to terms with his sexuality by the time the series starts, but that doens't mean that the rest of his family--or his fellow students--have; Stuart, the biggest (or, at least, busiest) stud in town, and QAF's approaches 30 and starts to re-examine his life; and Vince has to live with the rest of them.
The parents, families, friends and co-workers of all involved get plenty of screen time, and occasionally steal the scenes themselves--especially Denise Black (hairdresser Denise Osbourne from Coronation Street).
The DVD includes a Photo Gallery and a handful of interviews, which add little to the package. --Randy Silver
Amazon.com Essential Video
When it appeared on British television in 1999,
Queer as Folk caused quite a ruckus. There was the sex, as graphic as most anything you'd see in an R-rated film. There were the questionable morals--after all, one of the lead characters knowingly seduced a virginal 15-year-old boy. There was, of course, the rampant homosexuality, seeing as the series followed a group of gay men living in Manchester. But what really got people talking was the quality of the series: no leaden soap opera or exploitative sex romp,
Queer as Folk is an engrossing, incredibly well-written series that ranks with some of the best ever produced for British TV. Following the adventures of Stuart (Aidan Gillen), a rake capable of seducing anyone anywhere, and Vince (Craig Kelly), his boy-next-door best friend, as well as the family and friends who surround them,
Queer as Folk paints a complex, emotional, and funny portrait of its characters, who range from the regular to the outlandish. Less sensationalistic than it sounds,
Queer as Folk shares more in common with gritty, working-class British films like
My Beautiful Laundrette and
Beautiful Thing than it does with glossy, sex-themed American TV like
Sex and the City or even the Americanized version of
Queer as Folk. Though definitely comedic in parts,
Queer as Folk takes a clear-eyed yet fond view of its characters, from lothario Stuart, who can be charming one minute and self-obsessed the next, to hapless Vince, a mess of insecurities who can't believe it when a handsome Australian (Peter O'Brien) falls in love with him. Fans of the American
Queer as Folk will recognize the British counterparts to the American characters, as well as familiar plot arcs, but this series' writing and directing make it a far more dramatic--and multifaceted--look at gay life. This first season set, known as "Series 1," clocks in at four hours.
--Mark Englehart
