A Gay Old Time: Beautiful People

The phrase, “That’s the gayest thing I’ve ever seen” is often overused.  People will describe anything that shows signs of even the vaguest elements of camp, whether it be bright colors, cartoony flourishes, or musical numbers as being “extremely gay,” and while American shows such as Glee and Ugly Betty certainly qualify as owing a great deal to queer culture, they are not actually the gayest shows ever to be found on television, though they certainly are incredibly gay from an American standpoint.

Just to be clear, when I use the term, “gay” here I am not using it in a pejorative manner nor am I necessarily defining it as being about gay people.  Both versions of Queer as Folk, while, of course, throughly gay through and through, are not as gay as the series this review focuses on, if one judges the inherent gayness of any given work of art to be measured by its overall queer aesthetic, which is not about men who have sex with other men and/or women who have sex with other women, but about the manner in which the story is told.  Queer as Folk focused on gay relationships and showed frequent, relatively graphic depictions of gay sex.  It did not, however, regularly depict characters bursting into song, or outrageous fantasy sequences that showcase everything from dazzling (and literal) rainbow bursts of colors to guest appearances by gay idols and divas, or characterizations so over-the-top and camp, one might think that one has died and gone to gay heaven.

The BBC’s Beautiful People is so marvelously unique, because it is devoid of the heteronormative filter imposed on most series, even those generally about gay people.  American shows such as the aforementioned Glee and Ugly Betty have made enormous strides in depicting young gays, who, even though they are teenagers, know who they are and are proud of it.  What most Americans don’t realize, however, is that across the pond, there is a series so fiercely, unabashedly, and unapologetically in-your-face about gay culture–specifically the gay culture of two young boys who are fiercely, unabashedly, and unapologetically who they are–that it makes America look completely antiquated, by comparison.

Based on the memoirs of fashion guru, Simon Doonan, but transplanted to the late 1990s (making it the first nostalgic series about that decade and the adolescent characters only a few years younger than I am), Beautiful People focuses on Simon and his best friend, Kylie (his given name was Kyle, but he prefers to be referred to by the name of his favorite diva, Ms Minogue), two young gay boys from working class families in Reading, England, who dream of leaving their humdrum, suburban lifestyles and moving to London to be among the “beautiful people.”  These boys call each other “girlfriend,” snap their fingers in the air like weathered pros, and choreograph dance routines to Spice Girls numbers in their spare time.  Each episode begins in the present day, with Simon, now a fabulous window designer in his mid-to-late twenties (The History Boys‘ Samuel Barnett), recalling how he acquired a different item that helped make him who he is today.  Episode titles include “How I Got My Vase,” “How I Got My Nose,” “How I Got My Posh,” “How I Got My Plumes,” and “How I Got My Gash,” a pun that would best be explained by watching the episode.

Besides Simon and Kylie, Beautiful People also revels in the characters that populate their lives in Reading, from Simon’s wonderfully insane mum, Debbie (the divine Olivia Colman), to his eccentric and lovable dad, Andy (Aidan McArdle), to his willful and slutty sister, Ashlene (Sophie Ash), to his mum’s best friend, the blind and slightly batty Aunty Hayley (Meera Syal), to Kylie’s promiscuous and crass mum, Reba (Sarah Niles).  Simply put, the entire cast of characters is crazy, in the same way that the entire cast of Arrested Development is crazy, but they are a fabulous and surpisingly kind, kind of crazy. As bizarre and exaggerated as they can be, one also knows that most of them–at least, the members of Simon’s family–truly love and care for one another.

The series is also graced by the nuance that what we are seeing may not all be exactly as everything transpired, but instead how it all occurred through the eyes and mind and memories of a man, who is camp as camp can be.  At the same time, however, the world of Beautiful People is so vividly and richly depicted, in all of its sparkly glory, that one instinctively wants to keep from analyzing too deeply and inadvertently ruining its wondrous and delicate spell.  So, maybe Simon’s mum didn’t actually punch a teacher in the face, in front of the entire class, for treating Simon poorly, but the “real” version would be ever so much duller, so why even consider it?  This is one of the primary messages of Beautiful People.

In the episode, “How I Got My Camp,” the young Simon realizes the meaning of the word, “camp,” and that is, “doing things as if.”  In other words, drinking sparkling juice from a plastic wine glass but doing it as if it were champagne in a crystal flute, or opening the curtains of a bedroom window as if one was a character in an old Hollywood film. Simon imagines the world as he wants it to be, and therefore, since this is his story, that is what it is.  So, on the day of the auditions for the school musical, did the street outside Simon and Kylie’s houses really turn into the yellow brick road, and did they skip down it to the tune of “Ease on Down the Road” from The Wiz?  Yes, it did, and, yes, they did. Did Elaine Paige really appear on Simon’s stairs to do a disco number with him? Yes, she did.

It is this “anything goes” tone that truly makes the series so very special.  On the typical family sitcom, the unexpected is not something one often expects, and yet here, the fantastic and the unbelievable is the everyday.  Violent, out-of-the-blue deaths? Check.  Character doppelgangers?  Check.  Musical numbers? Check.  Outlandish dream sequences? Check. And yet, with all of this zaniness, what registers more than anything else is Beautiful People‘s immense heart.  Luke Ward-Wilkinson and Layton Williams, the two young actors who bring Simon and Kylie, respectively, to life, are both honest and fearless.  They strut and sashay as if there’s no reason in the world any boy their age wouldn’t be strutting and sashaying, but they aren’t simple cartoons or cliches.  They are also achingly real, hiding their fears and insecurities at how the rest of their peer group treats them underneath attitude and by doing their best to live out their fabulous, fabulous dreams.  Simon’s parents, particularly his mother, also provide him with all of the love in the world, and don’t judge him in the slightest no matter what ridiculously queer desire he brings up each week.  If he is depressed over the family home not having a water feature, his father will do his best to provide him with a water feature.  If Simon wants to put on a show in the family room, his family will watch and support him.

I don’t know if there’s any gay person–whether as flamboyant as Simon or not–who couldn’t identify with him in some way, or wouldn’t applaud his strength.  There certainly aren’t any, I should think, who wouldn’t have given the world to have lived in as supporting and loving environment as he has.  His family might be crazy, but whose family isn’t?  And at least they’ve provided Simon with a lifetime of great stories to tell.

To put Beautiful People‘s gayness in perspective with that of Glee: Lea Michele and Cory Monteith singing “No Air” while walking down the hallway, their hair blowing in slow motion, certainly has a tinge of camp, but it is nothing compared to Kylie, trapped inside a literal closet, finding himself inside a glittering, gay wonderland with plush red curtains and ornate candelabras and singing about the fantastic future he’ll have one day, or Simon singing a pop song about love with his teenage crush, while fireworks explode in the background, or Simon lip-synching to The Rose and naming his pet guinea pig, Bette Midler.  That is truly gay and truly camp.  And that is what Beautiful People is all about.

Note:

As of yet, there have been no plans to release either Series 1 or 2 of Beautiful People on DVD in the US.  Series 1 aired on Logo last year, but each episode was chopped to ribbons in order to accommodate commercials.  If you are able to procure the complete episodes from the UK, you are strongly encouraged to do so!

Related posts:

1. Two Gay Soaps: Queer as Folk; Cavalcade of Boys
2. “Sweetie, Dahling!”: Absolutely Fabulous: Absolutely Everything
3. FlashForward: “Revelation Zero”
4. Queer as Folk Season 3
5. The 20 Best Television Shows of the ’00s: A Decade in Review

Tagged as: Beautiful People, British TV, TV