gay green acres

Did Josh Kilmer-Purcell + Brent Ridge Create a Gay Reality Show We Can Actually Stand?

Author Josh Kilmer-Purcell’s columns in Out magazine are the stuff bland newsprint was made for (read: skipping), but we’ve got a wholly different attitude about his new show The Fabulous Beekman Boys, which will chronicle he and partner Brent Ridge as they ditch Manhattan for upstate New York. And yes, there are already the “gay Green Acres” jokes..

Premiering on Discovery’s Planet Green in June, Beekman lives in that weird eco-reality travel programming genre, somewhere between Leo DiCaprio’s E-topia and Tara Reid’s Taradise. Or, as Kilmer-Purcell explains, “We think of it as Green Acres crossed with Modern Family.” Fine, get all critically acclaimed on us.

And they have to include “Fabulous” in the show’s title to make sure you know this isn’t some breeder show like Trading Spaces. Ahem.

Ridge and Kilmer-Purcell, the ad exec and former drag queen, are also BBFF (that’s best business friends forever) with Martha Stewart, which makes sense, since Ridge is a former exec at Stewart’s mega-corp. Which also explains why she’s already offered a glowing review of what’s in store for the show. She also notes a few curious architecture tidbits from their upstate manse:

My favourite spot upstairs was a secret back hallway that connects a small guest bedroom, Josh’s writing studio and the staircase to the attic (which we also visited!) to the main hall. It’s a little warren of old, rustic rooms. It’s where I would spend all my time, I’m sure, if I lived there.

Secret back hallway? Uh huuuh. And there’s a crypt?! Are Josh and Brent planning for Armageddon, or one of these crazy parties?

Fine. But what is Beekman Boys even about? Its execs describe it as “hilarious and entertaining,” with Ridge having the “quintessential type A personality,” and Kilmer-Purcell and he sharing “eccentric, extended friends and family dynamic [that] reveals to viewers that trying to live the simple life isn’t so simple after all.”

Here’s the first episode’s blotter:

With Josh still living in the city to earn a paycheck and Brent living full time at the farm to launch their organic lifestyle brand, the couple tries to make the most of their weekends together on the farm. Brent and Josh welcome two new residents to their growing family as they bring home a pair of baby pigs who seem more than a bit reluctant to join the Beekman menagerie. Later, Josh asks Brent to come into the city for the first reading of his new book, but Brent says he’s too busy with the business and Josh is left disappointed. Personal feelings are quickly put aside after Polka Spot, the llama, appears to have become ill after her feeding. Brent’s calm doctor skills take over, while Josh sets off in a panic, only to later discover that the llama was simply sunning herself. Josh heads back to the city for the week and has a successful first reading of his book as he recounts the first time he met Brent’s former boss, Martha Stewart. When Josh returns to the farm looking forward to a relaxing weekend, Brent has other plans in mind and immediately sets off to do work. Josh can’t handle the fact that Brent has turned their weekend getaway into a business and Brent reminds Josh that they have committed to a year of sacrifice to get their company up and running. But Josh threatens that he’d rather not have a business at all if it means having to sacrifice their relationship in the process.

Relationship drama and farm animals in the first episode? Okay, we’re excited!

At least 100X more excited than we were about Robert Verdi’s terrible concoction, and not just because there’s a great chance The Martha herself will make a cameo. But also: not half as excited as we are about Kept, which, c’mon, is gonna be Emmy-worthy.

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