closet cases

Dutch TV’s Out of the Closet Beats Howard Bragman To Coming Out TV Show

Howard Bragman, the Hollywood publicist who only speaks kindly of celebrity gays when they pay him, has been talking up his A&E reality show Coming Out for months. “It is a difficult series to cast and produce, but celebrities have been approaching me,” he said in November. But while we wait for his premiere, the Dutch program Uit de Kast (or Out of the Closet) is already on air, and broadcasting real-life coming out stories. Yea!

“I want to make programmes about contemporary issues and homosexuality is a major theme on the social agenda,” says the show’s host Arie Boomsma, a Dutch actor. “Friends of mine say that even in Amsterdam they no longer dare to walk hand in hand. We need programmes that make people think, programmes with a personal approach to homosexuality.”

As you’ll see from the clip above, the whole thing seems pretty tame — and I always wonder what producers tell the families is the reason they have all these cameras following them around. Certainly they don’t brief them that they’re being film for a coming out show, right?

I guess the difference between this show and Bragman’s — besides the “English-speaking people” part — will be the celebrity factor. Unless there’s a certain Dutch homosexual that wants to make a big splash?

Does anyone know if other countries have shows like this one?

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