First look at hot new gay drama ‘Looking’
Patrick is checking a hook-up site. “Instagram filters have ruined everything,” he sighs. “I can’t make out if this guy is hot or not.” His buddy Agustin takes a peek, “He has a lazy eye,” he informs sombrely. Patrick shrugs. “Lazy eyes can be kinda hot.” Welcome to 21st Century gay life.
With, within the first 20 minutes, references to Facebook stalking, winking smiley faces, OK! Cupid, Instagram, tragic Internet dates plus three handsome lead characters who are in turn bald of face, moustachioed and rocking the full-on Hackney beard, Looking doesn’t so much surf the Zeitgeist as masturbate over it. On first view, this masturbation looks set to be mutual. The show is an impeccable, often-alluring depiction of gay life, but also shocking – like hearing your voice on tape for the first time. If it doesn’t speak to you as a gay man in 2014, we can only assume you live on Mars, or in Middlesbrough.
It’s been a long time since Queer as Folk or The L Word, and someone needed to step into the breach – and thank the Gaylords that someone was HBO, the channel which began the televisual revolution which has basically led to everything from Breaking Bad, to Mad Men, Girls and House of Cards and has left filmic Hollywood twitching nervously.
Watching it, it feels incredible that it has taken so long for someone to put our collectively compelling, confusing, thrilling and fucked-up 21st Century lives on screen in this way. As an opening gambit Patrick’s Internet date begins with his would-be paramour enquiring, “I assume you are drug and disease free?” The charmlessness of modern dating in this time-starved age is laid bare. It is funny and prescient. It’s about time we reflected on our own reflections.
Comparisons with both transatlantic versions of QAF are inevitable, but Looking sets out its stall from the get-go, opening with Patrick [Jonathan Groff] being groped relentlessly by a random on a cruising ground. So far, so very last century, until it emerges that he only went there for a lark, to see how guys used to do it back in the day. Looking is so much of its time that watching it from ten years ago, it would be virtually unintelligible. Give it a year and these first episodes will seem as dated as Downton, as passe as SJP.
Its bang-on-the-momentness could be annoying, but it really isn’t – thanks to some genius scripting plus three brilliant central performances. Our own Russell Tovey (above right) makes an appearance as Patrick’s boss Kevin – and his impressive ears take a leading role. “He’s like a white Will Smith,” comments one character hilariously and accurately. While best friends Dom (Murray Bartlett) and Agustin [Frankie J Alvarez] are recognisably and understandably jaded by the gay experience (Agustin ponders prostitution as a viable and respectable career option) – the show survives becoming something of an arch-fest thanks to the character of Patrick, an endearing ingenue who has somehow retained his faith in love, life and happy endings throughout his catalogue of romantic pratfalls. Our desire to see him salvage something meaningful out of the maelstrom of modern gay life is a reflection of our desire to see ourselves do the same. This is a triumph. If Looking was half as good as it is, it would be great.
Looking begins next Monday (January 27) at 10.35pm on Sky Atlantic.