Queer as Folk: The Complete First Season (1999) – DVD (volumes 1 and 6 only)

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by Walter Chaw It's extremely difficult to review a television show in a traditional sense. Television series tend to be long-term investments–seldom is the first season of anything ("The Sopranos" being an obvious exception, "Cheers" being an obvious example) worth much of a damn, especially in comparison to later seasons, when everything hums like a well-oiled machine. Explanation for this can be found in the awkwardness inherent in too much desperate exposition crammed into too short a time. Accordingly, the first episode of "Queer as Folk", recently collected in a six-DVD box set (FILM FREAK CENTRAL was supplied only with discs one and six), is mannered and uncomfortable. That's almost beside the point.

Based on a popular British television series, "Queer as Folk"'s inaugural season's success was all but guaranteed regardless of the quality of the show itself. With a built-in audience and the curiosity factor embedded in a series that promised to be as adult-oriented as its heterosexual counterpart "Sex and the City", "Queer as Folk" quickly became the most popular original series in cable netlet Showtime's history. After viewing the six episodes available to us for review (suffice it to say, this is not the ideal way to analyze a season), it's instantly clear that "Queer as Folk" is groundbreaking in what it dares to show (almost no peculiarity of homosexual intercourse is left mysterious) and courageous in light of the open hostility still displayed towards homosexuals in the shockingly prudish United States. In a way, it's almost more instructive to discuss the ugliness of popular opinion in America that makes a cause célèbre of what is essentially a randy primetime soap opera with gay characters.

The three initial episodes were each directed by Australian Russell Mulcahy. Better known for the cult classic Razorback and the camp classic Highlander, Mulcahy has an undeniably cinematic eye that provides early "Queer as Folk" a palpable panache. When he passes off directing duties at some point to less seasoned folks like Alex Chapple and Michael DeCarlo, the drop-off in quality is glaring. The trio of actors portraying the three personality types meant to demonstrate a cross-section of gay club culture (the virgin, the whore, the sensitive narrator) is also well-cast and convincing. Justin (Randy Harrison), Brian (Gale Harold), and Michael (Hal Sparks) traverse the underground rave scene, cannily examine the emotional pitfalls of new sexual relationships (gay and straight, and it embarrasses me to have to make that distinction), and generally give insight into certain aspects of gay culture that would otherwise remain a mystery to the breeder world.

While "Queer as Folk" occasionally throws us a stunningly provocative comic moment (consider this exchange: "Christ, he'll probably grow up to be straight." "That's why he needs his dad"), it too often relies on traditional situational comedy contrivances like fainting at a bris and a sassy sewage-talking mom (Sharon Gless) in the hopes, perhaps, that its message of acceptance be conveyed through convention. It is the same malady that afflicts Julie Davis's All Over the Guy–"queer" entertainments making their play for mainstream acceptance by succumbing to the same wheezing formulas that "straight" entertainments have been running into the ground for decades. Still, "Queer as Folk" is unashamedly brash and sporadically landmark by providing a glimpse into gay sexuality that appropriately reveals itself to be as perverse, awkward, and oddball as heterosexuality (but without all the infantile hang-ups and hypocritical religiosity). It's more valuable than actually good, with a lot of its interest occurring at the periphery of the predominantly staid storylines. But its audacity is both its appeal and its importance (why most comments about the show focus on its "groundbreaking-ness"), and the show is audacious.

THE DVD
The first disc features a "special edition" of the first episode that substitutes the traditional yak-track for intermittent split-screens with the main actors and executive producers and writers Ron Cowen and Daniel Lipman commenting on specific moments and providing some nice behind-the-scenes anecdotes. There's a real sense of pride in the project, amazement in its completion and release, and camaraderie in the process–it's the kind of bond formed during wartime that, as a racial minority I recognize as being born of a shared discrimination. A brilliant supplement and invaluable to a fuller appreciation of the series.

Disc six features nine chapter-free extended/deleted scenes narrated by Hal Sparks. It's not very clear why many of these scenes were trimmed (despite Sparks's explanations) save for time considerations, as they seem to offer more of the same kind of thing that the actual episodes already do. All the same, I was glad for many of the truncations: they tend to soften the liberal pulpit pounding that, as with any proselytizing, gets to be extremely boring. A long collection of outtakes plays like clips from that old Dick Clark/Ed McMahan-hosted laff-a-ganza. A "Meet the Folk" function links to interview clips with the actors expounding on their characters and the production team speaking in general terms about "Queer As Folk". It's a nice twist on the tired filmographies that go unread on most DVDs but nonetheless superfluous, especially if you've watched every episode leading to this last disc. Three trailers (one a Season Two promo), a four-minute photo gallery montage, and a mysterious DVD-ROM weblink that I couldn't access on my computer round out this disc.

Sadly, the quality of the video is only fair to middling. It's pretty low-resolution and there's a good deal of grain. Though colour is vibrant and distinct (particularly during extended neon-soaked street and club scenes) and black levels are spot-on, the 1.78:1 anamorphic transfers don't disguise the series' made-for-television origins. The Dolby 2.0 surround mixes provide a nice if unspectacular platform for the dialogue and driving techno-beats.

47 minutes/episode; NR; 1.78:1 (16×9-enhanced); English Dolby Surround; CC; 6 DVD-9s; Region One; Showtime