Thursday, October 02, 2008

Were the Nineties Really That..... Gay?


Just a few words about BBC's brand new sitcom, Beautiful People, which aired earlier tonight on BBC2 at 9.30. It tells the story of Simon, a thirteen-year-old gay kid living in Britain in the late 1990's, and his dysfunctional Northern working-class family. I'm not sure how it worked on a gay-level. I personally didn't really register with his character (perhaps cause I was a relatively late bloomer in that regard), but I do think that it has such a wonderfully nostalgic feel about it. I'm already loving the soundtrack (Baccara, Katrina & the Waves, Spice Girls, D:Ream and Jolene in just the first episode), and the emergence of Labour and Tony Blair is undoubtedly a part of history that I register with and acknowledge the importance of. The History Boys' Samuel Barnett plays an elder, successful, New York-dwelling Simon, looking back on his British childhood. I'm still unsure as to whether this is a necessary element of the setup but it does crucially add to the retrospective glimpse of the nineties and the liberation that girl power and people power really provided. Things can only get better for Beautiful People.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

They're not a Northern family, they're from Reading as was Doonan.