The mid 2010 have started a proliferous numbers of shows where finally members of the LGBT+ community have been portrayed as other recurrent or main characters.
I put together the best 7 TV shows that I have personally mostly watched.
1. Pose, Created by Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk and Steven Canals
The majority of the characters are gay, lesbian and transgender actors, and for this, Pose is considered the most LGBT+ TV show ever made. It explores the important and influential subculture of 1990s era New York City ball culture and shows just how crucial winning a ball was to the members of any given house. Though LGBT+ balls still happen today, they were at their peak in 1980s New York. Balls are pageants in which houses, or chosen families of LGBT+ youth (often gender nonconforming people, gay men and trans women, mainly of colour) compete against one another for the grand prize. Contestants are judged mostly by dance skill, ability to pass as cis/straight women or men, and themed attire. The ball culture gave many homeless trans youth a creative community and often offered them a home or at least a shelter.
2. Tales of the City, Created by Lauren Morelli
Tales of the City, created by Orange is the New Black’s Lauren Morelli, is the sequel to the Tales of the City trilogy adapted from the San Francisco newspaper column written by international author Armistead Maupin. The original show follows a naive young woman named Mary Ann who moves from Ohio to San Francisco in the 1970s and navigates life in the big city with new friends, many of whom are LGBT+. The true strength of this LGBT+ TV show is its 1960s flashback episode. In the flashback, we see a young Anna Madrigal played by Jen Richards (a transgender actress) as she navigates life as a trans woman in a world before the Stonewall Riots, when the trans mortality rate was extremely high and her existence was a crime in the eyes of the police.
3. Good Trouble, Created by Joanna Johnson, Bradley Bredeweg and Peter Paige
The LGBT+ TV show is a Freeform spin-off from the hit show The Fosters, the heartfelt story of a lesbian married couple and their teenager kids. Both shows are produced by guess who? Jennifer Lopez! Good Trouble follows two of the couple’s kids, Callie and Mariana, as they move to Los Angeles and live in communal living apartments. The spin-off series continue the stories of Callie and Mariana’s siblings and moms from the original show, but it also showcases many new characters, several of which are LGBT+! The manager of the commune is a lesbian hung up on her ex and trying to find herself after coming out to her family. One of Callie’s lovers is a bisexual artist and his sister an ex-military trans woman. If you liked The Fosters, but want less teen drama and more gay people of colour and social justice, this is the show for you!
4. RuPaul’s Drag Race UK, Starring RuPaul and Michelle Visage
The UK version of RuPaul's hit reality competition show, winner of 13 Emmys, where RuPaul searches for the country's next drag superstar has finally started in October 2019! The LGBT+ TV show has been a huge hit in the US for 10 years, and the first UK version is now on BBC Three along with Michelle Visage as historic recurrent judge. The format of the show follows the US version where contestants compete in funny and unique mini challenges that test a specific drag queen skill where the queens are required to perform, model in a photoshoot or to prepare a runway look for a themed challenge before having to face the judges. One queen each week is eliminated and asked to "sashay away".
5. Queer Eye, Created by David Collins
Each episode of LGBT+ TV show Queer Eye features a team of gay professionals in the fields of fashion, personal grooming, interior design, entertaining and culture collectively known as the "Fab Five". The team performs a makeover or as they call it in the show a "make-better" usually for a straight man and revamps their wardrobe, redecorates and offers advice on grooming, lifestyle, and food. In each episode, the “Fab Five” discuss their heterosexual client and review details of the subject's personal life and note problems in their various areas of expertise. They also involve family members to capture as much information as possible and to make sure their client’s makeover will be flawless.
6. Sex Education, Starring Gillian Anderson
This delightful British LGBT+ TV show stars Asa Butterfield as Otis, who lives with his sex guru mom Jean, played by the ever-watchable Gillian Anderson. Otis soon teams up with his school’s bad girl Maeve (Emma Mackey) to run an underground sex therapy clinic where he gives out advice, using his mom’s expertise, to horny and awkward teens. Ncuti Gatwa plays Otis’s over-the-top gay best friend Eric while Connor Swindells plays the school bully. Sex Education also features a queer female couple that seeks out advice from Otis.
7. Killing Eve, Starring Sandra Oh
Golden Globe winner Sandra Oh finally gets a role worthy of her immense talent as Eve Polastri, an MI6 investigator who discovers the existence of a new female assassin wreaking havoc around the world. British TV veteran and Emmy Award winner Jodie Comer plays Villanelle, the gorgeous bisexual polyglot is an assassin who becomes obsessed with Eve. The LGBT+ TV show is a full of British and dark-humoured fun but has a lot of drama too! Also, Killing Eve features the inimitable Irish actress Fiona Shaw, who previously starred in another LGBT+ hit, True Blood.
Pics courtesy of IMDB and Netflix