Welcome to Queerty’s latest entry in our series, Queerantined: Daily Dose. Every weekday as long as the COVID-19 pandemic has us under quarantine, we’ll release a suggested bit of gloriously queer entertainment designed to keep you from getting stir crazy in the house. Each weekend, we will also suggest a binge-able title to keep you extra engaged.
The Essential: Tales of the City
In honor of Tales of the City author Armistead Maupin turning 76 this week, we can’t resist the temptation for an all-out Tales binge. For the uninitiated, Tales of the City began as a newspaper serial, and later, a series of novels about life in San Francisco. Maupin emphasized a group of LGBTQ characters living in and around the fictional apartment house of 28 Barbary Lane. The groundbreaking portrayal of day-to-day queer life won a wide readership for the series. Eventually, PBS came calling, adapting the first book into a miniseries. The all-star cast included Laura Linney, Olympia Dukakis, Chloe Webb, Thomas Gibson, Barbara Garrick, Billy Campell, Ian McKellan and Donald Moffat.
The first miniseries–which featured (gasp) men kissing and both male and female nudity invited a right-wing backlash so big it almost got PBS defunded. Producer Alan Poul–who had already made plans for sequel series–took the series to Showtime, where he reunited most of the cast for two sequels. Netflix grabbed the torch last year, bringing back Linney, Dukakis and Garrick for a contemporary story that contrasts the 70s generation that experienced early queer liberation and AIDS with a younger one that grew up on Will & Grace and won marriage equality. The resulting series, which also stars Ellen Page, Murray Bartlett, Charlie Barnett, Jen Richards and Daniela Vega, pays special attention to its transgender-themed stories, and provides a moving, satisfying end to the series…for now. Somehow, we have a feeling we’ll have more tales of Barbary Lane in the future.
How about we take this to the next level?
Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
For the moment then, enjoy all the original series, or any combination thereof.
The first and fourth series stream on Netflix. The original three also stream on YouTube.
ShiningSex
the recent reboot of this great series was boring AF!!!!!
ingyaom
I don’t remember it being boring – just laughably bad!
PoetDaddy
THANK GOD the shelter-in-place months have not softened those members of our community who feel it necessary to splatter their venom all over their/our LGBTQ kin. What would the world be if we were kind and supportive to one another? I guess we’ll never find out as long as people like ShiningSex and ingyaom are around.
Tombear
Lara Linney is one of our finest actors, Olympia Dukakis as well. It was good and the husband and I enjoyed it!
Toofie
While the younger actors weren’t the best, the old guard like Linney made it worth watching.
thisiswhatithunk
The show was a wasted opportunity. If it had followed the later sequel stories it would have been amazing. Why bother taking on such iconic IP if you’re not gonna follow the author’s intended story? Michael Tolliver Lives, Mary Anne in Autumn & The Days of Anna Madrigal would have given us enough material for three fantastically engaging limited series. Instead we got a show that wanted to be all things to all people. The cast were excellent but the script was flabby and went nowhere. Nobody has managed to properly capture this series of books for the screen yet IMO. Here’s hoping some creative genius can in my lifetime.
sfhally
Didn’t watch the last one as I’d read enough of a synopsis to know it would have just gotten on my nerves.
When you love a series of books, taking liberties with characters, timelines and situations will drive you to distraction. Especially if you’re doing it to be woke and appeal to “a younger demographic”,
High hopes for the next book, though.
Jim
Just imagine if they had cast a trans actor instead of Olympia.
Yep it would have been sooooooo wrong.
Walker
The new series didn’t even make chronological sense… None of the actors were playing the correct age to have been adults in the 70s.
ingyaom
So much “venom”.