Welcome to your weekend streaming recommendations, a.k.a. the Weekend Watch, a handy guide to the queerest film and TV content that’s just a click away!
Happy Friday, fellow queers! And to those couch potatoes who have marked their calendars on this very special day of queer television, happy May 12!
To celebrate the return of probably the world’s two biggest LGBTQ+ reality shows, we’re including in your weekend streaming suggestions two “un-reality” shows—just go with it—that are equally binge-worthy. The strange, the surreal, the nevertheless scripted: once you’ve caught the premieres of RuPaul’s Drag Race and Queer Eye, continue to sate your gay appetite with offerings on the other side of the reality spectrum.
Read on for the streaming fare that will serve as the perfect cap to your week as you kick back, boot up your streamers, and start your engines.
RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars 8
RuPaul has really done it. Mother has turned Drag Race into an Emmy-dominating, year-round, small-screen empire, to the point that even during waiting periods between regular American seasons and All Stars, there are international versions to catch up on.
With scarcely a breath taken after Sasha Colby’s season 15 crowning, RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars season 8 begins streaming today on Paramount+. While it’s hard for anything to compete with the brilliance that was season 7’s all-winners iteration, audiences are still in for a treat with this crop of returning queens—all glowed up and ready for their Ru-demption.
Alexis Michelle, Darienne Lake, Heidi N Close, Jaymes Mansfield, Jessica Wild, Jimbo, Kahanna Montrese, Kandy Muse, LaLa Ri, Monica Beverly Hillz, Mrs. Kasha Davis, and Naysha Lopez will saunter back into the Werk Room in a premiere episode featuring charisma, uniqueness, nerve, talent, and probably more of All Stars’ admittedly convoluted rules.
But the main aspect of this cast, and the real reason we can’t wait to see how this turns out, is the fact that they’re all certifiable goofballs without a serious bone in their body-ody-odies. Long may this silliest—and queerest—of reality shows reign.
Now streaming exclusively on Paramount+.
Queer Eye, Season 7
Yet while Drag Race does the work of showcasing the beauty and empowerment inherent in drag artistry, another reality staple continues to break ground in its own way.
Queer Eye, which could soon become Netflix’s longest-running reality hit, returns today for a highly anticipated seventh season featuring seven episodes set in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Expect more fabulousness and charm from Jonathan Van Ness, Bobby Berk, Karamo Brown, Antoni Porowski, and Tan France, who came out the gate in 2018 as confident, competent inheritors of the Queer Eye For The Straight Guy mission and have only gotten better with each season.
As with most reality programs, Queer Eye has a solid structure and plenty of production polish. But what sets it apart is its heart-on-sleeve authenticity; this Fab Five’s emphasis on self-love never feels phony or scripted, allowing the inevitable waterworks to flow. We’re tearing up just watching that damn emotionally manipulative trailer!
Among the “heroes” this season in The Big Easy receiving the Fab Five’s inner and outer makeovers appears to be the bro-ish residents of a frat house, a first for the series. Can you believe?
Now streaming exclusively on Netflix.
Now Apocalypse
Now for your streaming suggestion that’s the farthest thing from reality—or is it?!
Now Apocalypse was trailblazing queer filmmaker Gregg Araki’s stab at marrying his own frenetic storytelling with that of David Lynch. Airing on Starz in 2019 and subsequently, sadly, canceled (for now?), it’s the story of horny young Los Angelenos navigating modern life and relationships. Oh, except there’s also reptilian aliens committing sexual assault, and more than a few hints that the world is about to end.
Come to think of it, Now Apocalypse makes for a perfect binge watch if you’re feeling apocalyptic vibes from 2023. For Ulysses Zane and his friends, the chaos of the cosmos mirrors or is merely a surreal manifestation of their sexual and romantic chaos down on earth. Who among us hasn’t seen alien premonitions while hooking up in an alleyway?
Indeed, the sexual encounters amid this show’s close encounters of a third kind are very hot. The chiseled-from-stone beauty of Avan Jogia, who plays Ulysses, is alone worth your streaming subscription.
Now streaming on Starz and the Roku Channel and rentable on Amazon Prime Video.
Sense8
If you’re looking for programming that’s LGBTQ+-focused and surreal—queer in every sense of the word—look no further than the Wachowski sisters, who have practically cornered the market. Considering how they’ve managed to sneak trans narratives into mainstream blockbusters, we queers can’t take their visionary, ground-breaking, sci-fi filmmaking for granted.
Sense8, which aired a first season in 2015, a second in 2017, and a series finale wrap-up in 2018, tells the story of eight individuals from around the globe who discover they’re mentally, emotionally, and even physically linked. These “sensates,” as they discover they’re called amid various evil plots and international espionage, harness the power of their close bonds in a thrilling, trippy, and often touching allegory for queer community.
The GLAAD Media- and Dorian Award-approved series is also, rather than just allegorical, explicitly queer. (Put it this way: orgy and polyamory enthusiasts love this show!)
Now that the streaming era seems past its prime, with striking Hollywood writers fighting for compensation and corporations scaling back their priciest productions, Sense8 feels like a prime example of a show that Netflix would never greenlight today. Thank goodness audiences had something this ambitious, gorgeously executed, and queer as hell when we did.
Streaming exclusively on Netflix.
The Kicker…
Maybe it’s just because Janelle Monáe recently announced her first full-length album in years with a sexy new single, but when we think of the overlap between queerness and surreal-ness, Dirty Computer comes to mind. The pansexual musician’s visual album masterpiece, or “emotion picture,” takes her Afro-futurist R&B-pop to the highest level, resulting in a compulsively watchable—it’s all right there on YouTube!—trippy trip to Monáe’s Metropolis.
