Channel 4 announc 50 Shas of Gay season markg the 50th anniversary of the partial-crimalisatn of homosexualy England and Wal
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CHANNEL 4 LED THE GAY REVOLUTN TV
Owen Jon’s celebratn markg 20 years sce the excellent seri Queer as Folk was first televised (Journal, 28 Febary) suggts that was this groundbreakg programme that transformed gay reprentatn on Brish fact, the radil change happened the 1980s on Channel 4.
And this year is the 30th anniversary of C4’s Out on Tuday (later OUT), the world’s first worked televisn seri aimed at a lbian and gay dience. It ran between 1989 and 1994 and was the culmatn of work done by a lot of lbians and gay men – mpaigners, journalists, dividuals and a very small number of workg televisn – for more posive and more regular reprentatn of on journey towards airg the programm was a bumpy ri – volvg qutns parliament, a mpaign by anti-permissive-society activist Mary Whehoe and tabloid newspaper hysteria – and all unfold as part of the rponse of the gay and lbian muny to the Aids crisis and the dranian sectn 28 anti-gay groundbreakg productns that changed broadstg culture happened across more than a om C4’s ceptn 1982.
From One Five 1983 through My Betiful Lndrette, In the Pk and Out on Tuday to Dyke TV 1994, our screens were opened up to gay stori. The rpons of the lns of lbians and gay men who watched the programm were much like Owen’s “joyful revelatn” impact broadstg was felt at the BBC, which started to missn s own gay and lbian seri, and the groundwork was laid for all the wonrful dramas and documentari that followed later years, cludg Queer as Folk.
C4 ANNOUNC NEW SEASON, 50 SHAS OF GAY
None of the would have happened whout the 1980s gay revolutn TV. years after began, Channel 4's gay programmg was dire. the legal age for nsensual homosexual sex om 21 to match.
a look at the 1994 New York Gay Para and Gay Gam that were. *Gay Time TV*, the big soap opera h, *This Life* and many others.
Even implicly queer media is rare on the platform, wh explicly gay ntent even rarer. Ey explor homoerotic them her wrg and might even end up experimentg wh San before the first season of the seri show is a highly dramatized exaggeratn of the real-life of Ey Dickson and is not historilly accurate. Their relatnship is que special that 's one of the few gay pairgs on televisn that reflects men of a particular age.