Queer as Folk Reboot Review

When I first heard about the reboot, I was a little excited. I was certain they would bring back, or even expand on the legacy that Showtime’s Queer as Folk was. Unfortunately to me, the new Queer as Folk (QaF) did not deliver on that at all. Even before having watched it, it seemed that the reboot was focused on ‘fixing’ certain mistakes of the Showtime QaF, which was mostly diversity (people of color, and the various other type of people within the LGBTQ+ spectrum, like transgender). Having now finished it, I seriously think that they only introduced more mistakes.

The film was full of quite too much cringe (more so than Marvel Films that use cringe as comedic relief). Most importantly, the characters themselves throughout the entire series were not very compelling, in that there is not much background or development on any of them. The only character that we got to see some background was with Ruthie. As a transgender M-F, we see her back as a male, with a different name, but even that isn’t much; we just know she’s longtime friends with Brodie. The rest, including Brodie, Shar, Mingus, not so much.

Practically all of the characters have ridiculously immature, especially Brodie, who is supposed to be the counterpart to Brian in Showtime’s QaF. Doesn’t help that they’re all hopelessly millennial too, ugh. There are some awww or deep moments in the show, but they do not redeem the show overall. The worst scene without a doubt is the fancy restaurant scene, in which the ‘lesbian’ couple, Shar (non-binary) and Ruthie (transgender) dines in. Shar takes it way too personally when the server addresses Shar by miss; the server corrects himself to use the term sir (which can be gender neutral, btw). Shar, who has not provided their pronouns (they/them) beforehand then sees this as an attack; the server is clearly homophobic!

Shar doesn’t even provide the server as to how they can be addressed (I wouldn’t know another ‘polite’ term to use in place of sir. Then they proceed to be as inappropriate and disrespectful as possible, then act all surprised (and nasty) when they’re finally escorted out. All that getting worked up, and Shar still never provided what to use in place of sir. Yikes. I officially hate those two characters, who are supposedly grown ass adults. What I hated most about that scene is that the two characters actually thought they were in the right… I sincerely hope this is not how people react to being misgendered (accidentally, by the way), and that they don’t go batshit crazy and not provide any constructive feedback whatsoever. Being intentionally misgendered is different.

Another mistake the show made was devoting too much of its development on the mass shooting that happens in the first episode; basically the pulse nightclub shooting. It’s a relevant scene, considering how still pervasive gun violence is, and how there are much threats against the LGBTQ+ community. But that event in the film takes away from its characters, to the point where the characters ‘development’ revolves around the event, in that they all have trauma/PTSD to deal with. The only aspect that the reboot retained from Showtime’s is tons of sex scenes… Which never was, and is, going to be enough to redeem the new mistakes in Peacock’s QaF. For the sake of hoping the second season is better, I’ll watch it, if it does comes out.