Television
New TV season promises abundant queer content
A gay medium and ‘Joe vs Carole’ among highlights
As with the movies, spring television can be a hit-or-miss affair. The Blade has put together a list of offerings that are likely to stand out in the sea of choices. With comedy, drama, romance, and even a little reality, we think you’ll find something of interest among the following queer and queer-adjacent offerings.
JOE VS CAROLE (March 3, Peacock) Technically, this one is not a preview so much as a “what are you waiting for?” Even if you had enough of gay redneck/cowboy/convicted murder conspirator/big cat enthusiast Joe Exotic and his arch-nemesis “that bitch Carole Baskin” from watching the Netflix hit docuseries “Tiger King,” there’s every reason to tune into this six-part miniseries about their rivalry, based this time on the podcast “Joe Exotic” and starring John Cameron Mitchell and Kate McKinnon as the eccentric (to say the least) rival animal lovers. Not only is it loaded with queerness – after all, Joe goes through husbands like the Liz Taylor of the Big Cat World – but it gives us a chance to watch two of our most gifted LGBTQ actors go to town with two larger-than-life characters who are perfectly suited to their copious talents. Throw in the always criminally underrated Kyle MacLachlan as Carole’s husband (the second one, not the one she may or may not have fed to her tigers), as well as a game supporting cast that includes Brian Van Holt, Sam Keeley, Nat Wolff, Marlo Kelly, William Fichtner, Dean Winters, and David Wenham, and you have no excuse not to binge watch all six hours of this one at your earliest possible convenience.
LIFE AFTER DEATH WITH TYLER HENRY (Netflix, March 11) This one may not be for everyone, but out-and-proud TV medium Tyler Henry has no shortage of fans, and this new series will surely be a must-watch for them when it drops on Netflix this spring. For those who are unfamiliar, Henry spent four seasons as the host of “Hollywood Medium” on the E! Television Network, where he exhibited his clairvoyant skills for a wide range of celebrities. Now, according to the new show’s description, the “world-renowned medium” travels across the country to offer readings to as many of the [more than 300,000] people on his waiting list as he can, bringing them the hope, healing, and closure they are seeking.” Promises of a “transformational and emotional series” that will provide “proof that there is more to this world than what we see and that our loved ones never really leave us” may not carry much weight with the many skeptics who accuse Henry of being a manipulative charlatan, but they weren’t likely to watch, anyway – and for the many who find him irresistible, all nine episodes will surely be a treat.
WELCOME TO FLATCH (Fox, March 17) Inspired by the BAFTA-winning UK series, “This Country,” this half-hour comedy series comes from writer Jenny Bicks (“Sex and the City”) and director Paul Feig (“The Office”) is a single-camera “mockumentary” about a small midwestern town and the many eccentric personalities who live there – particularly cousins, best friends, and town trouble-makers Kelly and Lloyd “Shrub” Mallet (out actress Holmes, billed as Chelsea Holmes, and Sam Straley). Part “Parks and Recreation,” part “Waiting for Guffman,” it has all the earmarks of a good TV comfort show – humor, a hip factor, and an ensemble full of lovably quirky characters, at least one of which is bisexual. The cast also includes Justin Linville, Taylor Ortega, Krystal Smith, and Seann William Scott as the town preacher.
INSOMNIA (March 18, Revry) With Neilsen reporting that fewer than 3 percent of the characters on our television screens are Asian, this queer South Asian dramedy – originally a digital series – created and written by Vishaal Reddy is a welcome addition to the lineup. Reddy stars as Nikhil Sharma, a bisexual Indian-American writer who is going through an identity crisis when a chance encounter leads him to secretly start moonlighting as a male escort in New York City. Through his often-absurd late-night adventures, he finds himself on a journey to discover love, happiness, and his true identity – while dealing with racism, sexuality, loneliness, and a lack of sleep along the way. According to Vishaal, the concept for the show was spawned by his own real-life experience, and inspired by shows like “Master of None,” “Fleabag”, “Louie,” and “High Maintenance.” Directed by Michele Cutolo, it also stars Nikki Renee Daniels, Aneesh Sheth, Cheech Manahar, Alison Barton, Verma Kuhoo, Nandita Shenoy, Jason Veasey, James Seol, and Daniel Burns.
QUEER AS FOLK (May 27, Peacock) Depending on who you ask, this one is a biggie. The groundbreaking 1999 British series already had an American adaptation in 2000, and each has its fans – many of whom have expressed their qualms (to put it mildly) over the idea of a new reboot. That hasn’t stopped original writer/creator Russell T. Davies (“It’s A Sin”) from joining forces with new writer/creator Stephen Dunn (“Closet Monster”) to executive produce one, however, this time centered on the lives of several LGBTQ characters in New Orleans – promised to be a much more diverse assortment than the group of gay men predominantly featured in the original shows. The highly anticipated return of the franchise also differs from its predecessors by using queer actors to portray all its queer roles – and the resulting cast list is an impressive lineup, which includes Ryan O’Connell (“Special”), Johnny Sibilly (“Pose”), Devin Way (“Grey’s Anatomy’), Jesse James Keitel (“Alex Strangelove”), Fin Argus, Candace Grave, Benito Skinner, and Juliette Lewis, and even Kim Cattrall as a “martini-soaked, high society Southern debutante with trailer park roots.” Shade from old-school fans aside, this new iteration looks poised to make some welcome improvements as it reinvents the beloved series for a new era. Tentatively scheduled for a May 27 premiere.
HEARTSTOPPER (Netflix, TBA) You might think this upcoming series adapted from Alice Oseman’s YA webcomic is just another of the growing number of queer teen romances popping up every season – but as one of the few LGBTQ shows to be streamed under the banner of Neflix’s “Family” division, it will be marketed to the kids for whom it’s actually meant. That doesn’t mean older viewers won’t also be interested in the following the relationship between openly gay teen Charlie and sweet-but-seemingly-straight school rugby player Nick (Joe Locke and Kit Connor, respectively), as they explore their new friendship and navigate the feelings that blossom as in the process. With all eight episodes penned by Oseman herself, the series promises to expand on her popular webcomic by including “all the small stories of Nick and Charlie’s lives that together make up something larger”, and is sure to please its many fans while winning over a legion of new ones. It also stars Yasmin Finney, Sebastian Croft, William Gao, and Jenny Waiser. There’s no official release date yet, but the streaming platform has previously announced it would debut the show in the Spring – so keep your eyes out!
Nominations for the 78th Primetime Emmy Awards are here — and they are so, so queer!
With the year we’ve seen in LGBTQ media, this isn’t very surprising; whether it be jaw-dropping new series or the ends of fan-favorite classics, every month offered a new project or performer for queer audiences to fall in love with. There were some pleasant surprises — and shocking snubs — with these nominations that have left the many TV fanatics in our community excited, hopeful that their favorite actor or series can take home at least one award at this year’s ceremony.
Will this be the gayest Primetime Emmy Awards that the Television Academy has ever seen? Let’s take a look at some of the biggest, absolutely queerest nominations for this year and find out!
Leading the pack (and making history) for queer television is “Hacks,” with the final season of this HBO Max comedy earning a massive 25 nominations — breaking “Schitt’s Creek”’s record for the maximum number of nominations for a comedy series’ final season! Following an established comedienne (Jean Smart) and her bisexual, thoroughly Gen Z comedy partner (Hannah Einbinder), the series has been applauded for not only its portrayals of queer identity but also for how it showcases the generational divide in a way anyone can laugh at. Smart and Einbinder are both nominated for Outstanding Lead Actress and Outstanding Supporting Actress, respectively, with their fellow performers Meg Stalter, Paul W. Downs, Kaitlin Olson, and more also earning nominations for their time on the show. These, along with the numerous nominations for “Hacks”’ writing, directing, and all-around production, make it one of the most nominated programs at this year’s Emmys.
And this isn’t the only sapphic program being celebrated at this year’s awards! When “Pluribus” premiered, it took the (thankfully non-hive-minded) world by storm; it follows a lesbian author (Rhea Seehorn) who becomes one of the only people left with autonomy when an alien virus takes over the Earth. Seehorn — who offers an impeccably bitter performance as protagonist Carol Sturka — is being honored with an Outstanding Lead Actress nomination, with the show itself receiving 18 nominations overall in categories ranging from Outstanding Supporting Actor to Casting for a Drama. One extremely fun, thoroughly queer fact about these nominees: the actresses behind both of Carol’s onscreen love interests, Karolina Wydra and Miriam Shor, have earned their first Emmy nominations ever due to their work on the series!
While these queer TV shows are earning massive praise, the Emmys also made sure to honor the LGBTQ+ and ally celebrities who’ve graced our screens this year.
When he isn’t exciting audiences all over the world in “Heated Rivalry,” Connor Storie was making viewers laugh on “Saturday Night Live,” a hosting spot which earned him a nomination for Guest Actor in a Comedy. And though Jeff Hiller (who is coming off a 2025 Emmy win for “Somebody, Somewhere”) has proven to be one of the best parts of new hit “Widow’s Bay,” it was his turn as a mind-controlled, bicycle-short-wearing drone in “Pluribus” that earned the openly gay actor an Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama nomination. Along with these, the always immaculate Zendaya received a nomination for Outstanding Lead Actress for her role as queer recovering drug addict Rue in “Euphoria,” and long-time ally Claire Danes will be competing for Lead Actress in a Limited Series for her role as troubled lesbian writer Aggie Wiggs in “The Beast in Me.”
When it comes to scripted television, the 2026 Emmy Nominations are filled with nominations for queer performers and stories alike. But, to the shock of nobody who loves nothing more than a good confessional and shocking table flip, there was one category where queer performers absolutely dominated: Reality Television.
The Outstanding Host for a Reality/Competition Program is one of this year’s most competitive categories — and not just because four of the five nominees are queer! The hilarious RuPaul Charles and Alan Cumming have both received nominations in this category, with their shows “RuPaul’s Drag Race” and “The Traitors” also being nominated for Best Reality Competition Program. They’re joined by lesbian heartthrob Kristen Kish, who, for the third year in a row, has been nominated for Outstanding Host right alongside her series, “Top Chef,” for Best Reality Program!
And, finally, making her debut in the world of Emmy nominations is Ariana Madix, who just earned her first nomination for Outstanding Host thanks to her work on “Love Island USA”! An alum of reality TV herself, her guiding sexy singles along the path to love has helped this reality series take the country by storm. An openly bisexual host — who has stated that she wants her own show to be more queer — she joins this amazing group of leaders helping to innovate this genre today.
While these are some of the biggest LGBTQ+ nominees at this year’s Emmys, they don’t include the countless queerr editors, writers, costume designers, and more who have also been nominated in the ceremony’s 100+ categories. They all deserve a huge round of applause for their tireless work this year, and each of them should remember that they’ve each won just by being nominated.
And even if they don’t take home that illustrious trophy, in the words of a particular Queen of Drag who’s nominated for Outstanding Reality Host, always remember: losing is the new winning!
You can watch the 78th Primetime Emmy Awards on Sept. 14 at 8 p.m. EST on NBC and Peacock.
Television
‘Big Mistakes’ an uneven – but worthy – comedic showcase
In the years since “Schitt’s Creek” wrapped up its six season Emmy-winning run, nostalgia for it has grown deep – especially since the still painfully recent loss of its iconic leading lady, Catherine O’Hara, whose sudden passing prompted a social media wave of clips and tributes featuring her fan-favorite performance as the deliciously daft Moira Rose. Revisiting so many favorite scenes and funny moments from the show naturally reminded us of just how much we loved it, even needed it during the time it was on the air; it also reminded us of how much we miss it, and how much it feels now like something we need more than ever.
That, perhaps more than anything else, is why the arrival of “Big Mistakes” – the new Netflix series starring, co-created and co-written by Dan Levy – felt so welcome. We knew it wouldn’t be the Roses, but it seemed cut from the same cloth, and it had David Rose (or at least someone who seemed a lot like him) in the middle of a comically dysfunctional family dynamic, complete with a mother who gets involved in town politics and a catty sibling rivalry with his sister, and still nebbish-ly uncomfortable in his own gay shoes. Only this time, instead of running a charmingly pretentious boutique, he’s the pastor of the local church, and instead of a collection of kooky small town neighbors to contend with, there are gangsters.
As it turns out, it really does feel cut from the same cloth, but the design is distinctly different. Set in a fictional New Jersey suburb, it centers on Nicky (Levy) and his sister Morgan (Taylor Ortega) – he openly gay with an adoring boyfriend (Jacob Gutierrez), yet still obsessive about keeping it all invisible to his congregation, and she drudging aimlessly through life as an underpaid schoolteacher after failing to achieve her New York dreams of show biz success – who inadvertently become enmeshed in a shady underworld when a gesture for their dead grandmother’s funeral goes horribly awry.
They’re surrounded by a crew of equally compromised characters. There’s their mother Linda (Laurie Metcalf), whose campaign to become the town’s mayor only intensifies her tendency to micromanage her children’s lives; Yusuf (Boran Kuzum), the Turkish-American mini-mart operator who pulls them into the criminal conspiracy yet is himself a victim of it; Max (Jack Innanen), Morgan’s live-in boyfriend, who pushes her for a deeper commitment and is willing to go to couples’ therapy to prove it; Annette, his mother (Elizabeth Perkins), who lends her society standing toward helping Linda’s campaign against a misogynistic opponent (Darren Goldstein); and Ivan (Mark Ivanir), the seemingly ruthless crime boss who enslaves the siblings into his network but may really be just another slave himself. It’s a well-fleshed out assortment of characters that helps our own loyalties shift and adapt, generating at least a degree of empathy – if not always sympathy – that keeps everyone from coming off as a merely “black-and-white” caricature of expectations and typecasting.
To be sure, it’s an entertaining binge-watch, full of distinctive characters – all inhabiting familiar, even stereotypical roles in the narrative – who are each given a degree of validation, both in writing and performance, as the show unspools its narrative. At the same time, it makes for a fairly bleak overall view of humanity, in which it’s difficult to place our loyalties with anyone without also embracing a kind of “dog eat dog” morality in which nobody is truly innocent – but nobody is completely to blame for their sins, anyway.
In this way, it’s a show that lets us off the hook in the sense that it places the idea of ethical guilt within a framework of relative evils, as it permits us to forgive our own trespasses by accepting its “lovably” amoral characters, each of whom has their own reasons and justifications for what they do. We relate, but we can’t quite shake the notion that, if all these people hadn’t been so caught up in their own personal dramas, none of them would have ended up in the compromised morality that they’re in.
However, it’s not some bleak morality play that Levy and crew undertake; rather, it’s more an egalitarian fantasy in which even “bad” choices feel justified by inevitability. Everybody’s motivations make enough sense to us that it’s hard to judge any of the characters for making the choices – however unwise – that they do. In a system where everyone is forced to compromise themselves in order to achieve whatever dream of self-fulfillment they may have, how can anybody really blame themselves for doing what they have to do to survive?
Of course, all things considered, this is more a relatable comedy than it is a morality play. As a comedy of errors, it all works well enough on its own without imposing an ideology on it, no matter how much we may be tempted to do so. Indeed, what is ultimately more to the point is how well this pseudo-cynical exercise in the normalization of corruption – for that is what it really about, in the end – succeeds in letting us all off the hook for our compromises.
In the end, of course, maybe all that analysis is too deep a dive for a show that feels, in the end, like it’s meant to be mostly for fun. Indeed, despite its focus on being dragged into the shady side of life, the arc of its messaging seems to be less about a moralistic urge toward making the “right” choice than it is a candid recognition that all of us are compromised from the outset, often by choices we only force upon ourselves, and that’s a refreshing enough bit of honesty that we can easily get on board.
It helps that the performances are on point, especially the loony and wide-eyed fanaticism of Metcalf – surely the MVP of any project in which she is involved – and the directly focused moral malleability of Ortega; Levy, of course, is Levy – a now-familiar persona that can exist within any milieu without further justification than its own queer relatability – and, in this case, at least, that’s both the icing on the cake and substance that defines it. That’s enough to make it an essential view for fans, queer or otherwise, of his distinctive “brand,” even if he – or the show itself – doesn’t quite satisfy in the way that “Schitt’s Creek” was able to do.
Seriously, though, how could it?
Television
‘The Pitt’ stars discuss what season two gets right about queer representation
Noah Wyle and Taylor Dearden spoke with Blade in LA
As season two of “The Pitt” comes to a close this Thursday, stars Noah Wyle and Taylor Dearden are looking back on what this season got right about queer representation.
“There is some intentionality behind it, but it’s not necessarily for the representation to be anything other than human or ubiquitous to anyone that would come into an emergency room,” Noah Wyle, who plays Dr. Robby, told the Los Angeles Blade at PaleyFest event in Los Angeles on April 12. “I know that we’ve done some storylines with some gay couples, and we did a storyline in season 1 where a woman comes in who’s cut her arm, who’s trans. But in both of those storylines, that wasn’t the point.”
Wyle continues, “In doing it that way, and not making a point of orientation being part of the problem that brings you to the emergency room, we have been told in feedback that that has been extremely revolutionary, almost, and extremely appreciated. But that’s true whether we do storylines with any kind of minority or a person with a disability. We try to have a cosmology of cast and representation on the show that’s indicative of what you find in Pittsburgh.”
Dearden, who plays Dr. Mel King, echoed Wyle’s sentiment: “I think constantly battling tropes is always important. It’s not a show about romance; it’s a show about real life and a shift in the ER. The more we represent everyday people going through everyday life, they just happen to be queer, they just happen to be trans, and making it not the plot, is putting everyone on equal playing [field]. You don’t have to have a big coming out scene.”
Queer representation on “The Pitt” is also notable through the actual actors themselves, including openly queer actor Supriya Ganesh, who plays Dr. Samira Mohan (who didn’t attend PaleyFest after the news that she is not returning for season three), and Amielynn Abellera, who plays Perlah Alawi.
“Doctors don’t put value judgments on who they treat,” Wyle concludes. “That’s not a luxury extended to them, and so that’s not part of our storytelling.”
The season two finale will air Thursday, April 16, on HBO Max, while season three has already been confirmed and is currently being written.
PHOTOS: Petal Release Party
Madonna headlines World Pride Music Festival in Amsterdam
Reggie White relishing first season as artistic director of Woolly Mammoth
PHOTOS: Amsterdam Pride Canal Parade
Amsterdam Pride Canal Parade draws hundreds of thousands
Madonna to perform at World Pride in Amsterdam
BLADE ENDORSEMENT: Susan Stewart for mayor of Rehoboth Beach
PHOTOS: Lambda Legal in the Pines
Calendar: July 31-August 6
