Two of the most notable rising Hollywood stars are set to star in a period romance that’s earning some awards buzz, as Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor star in the 2025 new movie The History of Sound.

That buzz was generated at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, where The History of Sound had its world premiere. Plus, the movie is being backed by Mubi, the distributor that has found some recent success with movies like The Substance, Aftersun and Drive My Car.

For all the info on The History of Sound, read on below.

The History of Sound release date

The History of Sound premieres exclusively in movie theaters on September 12 in the US. At this time, we’re not able to confirm a UK release date.

The History of Sound cast

Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor headline The History of Sound. Both actors have been on the rise in recent years; Mescal with performances in Gladiator 2, All of Us Strangers, Aftersun and Normal People, and O’Connor in Challengers, The Crown and Emma.

Also starring in The History of Sound are Oscar winner Chris Cooper (Adaptation, Everything’s Going to Be Great), Molly Price (Elsbeth, Babygirl), Alison Bartlett (Materialists, Sesame Street), Michael Schantz (Power Book III: Raising Kanan, City on a Hill), Samuel H. Levine (Turning, She Came to Me), Peter Mark Kendall (Watson, Kaleidoscope), Raphael Sbarge (Friendship, Once Upon a Time), Hadley Robinson (Mountainhead, Anyone But You), Emma Canning (Say Nothing, Masters of the Air) and Alessandro Bedetti (Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, Those About to Die).

The History of Sound plot

From a screenplay by Ben Shattuck, here is the official synopsis for The History of Sound:

“Two young music students, Lionel and David, attending the Boston Conservatory in 1917, bond over their shared love of folk music. They reconnect a few years later, embarking on a song collecting trip in the backwaters of Maine.”

The History of Sound trailer

Watch The History of Sound trailer right here:

The History of Sound reviews

After premiering at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, The History of Sound has thus far (as of August 8) received a “Fresh” rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes.

The History of Sound director

Oliver Hermanus is the director of The History of Sound. Though he may not be a household name, Hermanus has directed a number of well-received movies in his career thus far, including earning a BAFTA nomination for Outstanding British Film of the Year for 2022’s Living. He also directed three episodes of the TV series Mary & George.

Here is a look at his complete feature directing credits:

• Shirley Adams (2009)
• Beauty (2011)
• The Endless River (2015)
• Moffie (2019)
• Living (2022)

The History of Sound behind the scenes

The producers of The History of Sound are Lisa Ciuffetti, Hermanus, Andrew Kortschak, Sara Murphy, Thérèsa Ryan and Zhang Xin. Mescal is an executive producer on the movie.

Inspired by true events, Plainclothes is a 1990s set drama about a working-class undercover policeman who falls for the gay man he's been enlisted to entrap. It stars Russell Tovey as Andrew and The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds star Tom Blyth as Lucas but more about their roles will be announced in due course.

Take a peek at Russell Tovey's excitement in his instagram posts below. Meanwhile, here's everything you need to know about the movie Plainclothes…

Plainclothes release date

Plainclothes will be premiered at the Sundance film festival on Sunday January 26 2025 at The Ray Theatre, Park City, Utah, at 7pm. It was released in the UK cinemas from May 30 2025. We'll also let you know if the movie will be launched a streaming channel such as Netflix, Prime Video or Apple TV Plus.

Is there a trailer? 

There are informative chats available for Plainclothes which you can watch below...

Plainclothes plot

Plainclothes follows a 1990s cop Andrew (Russell Tovey) who is asked to go undercover to entrap and apprehend gay men. However, he finds himself drawn to one of his targets Lucas (Tom Blyth). Defying all orders Andrew starts to fall in love...

There are quite a few similarities to the 2022 Prime Video film My Policeman starring Harry Styles.

Plainclothes cast — Russell Tovey as Andrew

Russell Tovey, who stars as Andrew in Plainclothes, has previously in Being Human, The Good Liar, Him and Her, The Sister, Years and Years, Gavin & Stacey, The Job Lot, What Remians and American Horror Story.

* There's more from Russell Tovey on his role as Andrew in Plainclothes in the Instagram post below...

Tom Blyth plays Lucas

Playing Lucas in Plainclothes is Tom Blyth. He previously starred in Corialanus Snow in the recent movie The Hunger Games: The Ballad of the Songbird. He stars in the TV series Billy the Kid and has also had roles in Benediction, The Gilded Age, Scott and Sid and Robin Hood.

Who else is starring?

Other cast in Plainclothes are Christian Cooke as Ron, Maria Dizzia as Marie, Gabe Fazo as Uncle Ron, Amy Forsyth as Emily and John Bedford Lloyd as Lt. Sollars.

Behind the scenes and more on Plainclothes

Plainclothes is directed by Carmen Emmi and is produced by Arthur Landon, Colby Cote and Eric Podwall. The movie is shooting in Syracuse, New York.

Carmen Emmi talks about Plainclothes in the clip below...

Two decades ago, the groundbreaking queer doc The Aggressives chronicled the daily lives, dreams and desires of several transmasculine BIPOC protagonists—Kisha Batista, Trevon Haynes, Octavio Sanders and Chin Tsui, among them—as they navigated gender, sexuality, race and class over the course of five years in New York City. Now, movie fans will get to catch up with that pioneering quartet in the documentary sequel Beyond the Aggressives: 25 Years Later, airing tonight on Showtime. 

Directed by Daniel Peddle, the filmmaker behind the original 2005 film as well as narrative films like 2014's Sunset Edge and 2017's Moss, Beyond the Aggressives similarly follow Kisha, Trevon, Octavia and Chin across five years, with footage shot between 2018 and 2023. Following its premiere at New York's Newfest last fall, tonight's airing will mark the doc's television premiere.

Nominated for a 2024 GLAAD Media Award for "Outstanding Documentary," the acclaimed doc sees the trailblazing foursome "pursuing dreams in the arts, surviving the experience of being held in ICE detention, reuniting with estranged children, deciding whether to start families of their own, and seeking gender-affirming healthcare," reads a Paramount press release. 

Interwoven with the remarkable personal stories of its four featured subjects, the highly anticipated sequel film will also feature candid testimonials of fresh voices from the wider BIPOC community, offering "compelling insights into the queer experience" and continuing to challenge normative ideas about gender while painting a deeply moving portrait of modern LGBTQ+ life. 

The movie also kicks off a collaboration between Showtime and organizations including GLAAD, GLSEN and Trans Equity Consulting, with a campaign aimed at expanding conversations about identity and visibility for trans and gender non-conforming people, per Deadline. 

Beyond the Aggressives: 25 Years Later premieres on Showtime tonight, March 30, at 9pm Eastern. The 80-minute film will also be available to stream beginning March 30 for Paramount Plus subscribers who have a Paramount+ with Showtime plan (available for $11.99 per month or $119.99 per year). Cord-cutters can also tune into Showtime as a premium channel by adding it to one of your existing livestreaming TV apps, including Fubo, Hulu with Live TV, Sling TV, YouTube TV and DirecTV Stream. 

Check out the trailer for the documentary before tuning into Beyond the Aggressives: 25 Years Later tonight on Showtime. 

Tubi lacks the name recognition that some of the bigger streaming services have, but their LGBTQ+ movie library has a little something for everyone. There are documentaries and true life stories for those who are longing to learn more about their history, movies that explore LGBTQ+ identity through different cultural lenses and a mix of new and old classic LGBTQ+ romantic comedies and dramas. 

When you’re in the mood for a great LGBTQ+ film check out one of these classics on Tubi:

Single Man Problems: Volume One (2023)

Single Man Problems: Volume One is a comedy/drama that follows the story of a young Black man trying to navigate the gay romantic world. In his process of exploring romance he's forced to unpack his own personal baggage while facing the reality that dating is just hard. 

The Matthew Shepard Story (2002)

In 1998, the hate-motivated murder of college student Matthew Shepard shocked and outraged the nation. Matthew was horrifically beaten and then tied to a remote fence post and left to die by two men who targeted him because he was gay.

The Matthew Shepard Story is a dramatization of the facts of Matthew Shepard’s murder that is also infused with the compassion and grief that led communities to re-examine their treatment of LGBTQIQA+ people. The movie doesn’t gloss over the hate and homophobia spotlighted during the investigation and trial of the two murderers of Matthew Shepard. The legislation that was proposed and passed in the aftermath of this horrific murder formed the basis that today makes sure murders motivated by hate carry enhanced penalties.

It's an important story that all LGBTQIA+ people should see to remember the life of Matthew Shepard and how his murder changed the way LGBTQIA+ people are viewed by society. — Sonya Iryna 

Go Fish (1994)

One of the first movies that featured lesbians telling their own stories, Go Fish was shot on a shoestring budget and ended up turning a significant profit, proving that there was some commercial viability to movies made by and for lesbians for the first time. Aside from its historical value, this is just a fun love story and a true artifact of its time. Shot in black and white, Go Fish follows the single Max (Guinevere Turner), who is reluctant to let her roommates set her up with one of their friends. Accompanied by a lesbian Greek Chorus, Max ultimately finds true love, but it’s the aesthetic that makes this film an LGBTQ+ classic. — Sara Century

But I'm a Cheerleader (1999)

Megan is a high schooler whose world falls apart when her family and friends stage an intervention, informing her that she is, in fact, a lesbian. This shocks and dismays her and she is immediately sent to True Directions, a conversion therapy camp, where she meets a whole slew of queer and questioning teens. Quickly developing an attraction to the cantankerous Graham, Megan starts to believe that there might not be anything wrong with being gay, after all. Comical, colorful, and truly absurd, this has long been hailed as one of the great LGBTQ+ comedies of the late 90s and introduced a lot of queer audiences to the great comedic timing of both Clea Duvall and Natasha Lyonne. — Sara Century

More than Friends

More than Friends is your classic "I’m in love with my best friend, but I’m engaged to someone else" movie. Although in this film, the leading lady is caught in a triangle between her boyfriend and her platonic girlfriend. 

The Birdcage (1996)

The Birdcage serves as a classic Robin Williams comedy. In it, the late comedian plays a gay cabaret owner, and he and his loving partner (Nathan Lane) attempt to portray being heterosexual in an effort to impress their son’s right-wing future inlaws. 

Kiss Me (2012)

At her father’s 60th birthday and in the wake of his proposal to his live-in girlfriend, daughter Mia announces her engagement to her longtime partner Tim. In respect for her father’s wishes, she goes to spend time with his fiance’s family, including her daughter, Frida. Sharing a bedroom, the two find themselves in a surprising whirlwind love affair, which ends when they must both return to their partners. Their relationships both quickly end, but they are both much more broken up about one another. Complicated interpersonal relationships abound in this sweet, touching love story. — Sara Century

The Brandon Teena Story (1998)

Brandon Teena was a transgender man who was murdered in 1993 along with two other people. Teena was targeted by the murderers because he was trans. This documentary about the brief and tragic life of Brandon Teena shines a spotlight on the very real dangers that transgender people have faced in the past and continue to face today. The shocking events surrounding the days immediately before the murder and the aftermath of the killing serve as a sobering reminder of how far culture has come in acceptance of LGBTQ+ people and how far it still has to go.

The documentary includes interviews with the people who knew and loved Brandon as well as interviews with the killers, archival footage of the trial and investigation and other important historical records. — Sonya Iryna

Monster (2003)

Monster stars Charlize Theron as Aileen Wuornos, a street prostitute that winds up murdering seven male clients. Additionally, the movie explores Wuornos' romantic endeavors with her girlfriend, Selby Wall played by Christina Ricci. This is a crime drama inspired by true events. 

Fire Song (2015)

Shane is a Two-Spirited teen whose elder sister recently died by suicide, leaving him to struggle with the decision of whether or not to leave his family and the reservation behind in order to go to college in the big city or to stay at home as his sister had in order to take care of those that need him. Knowing what that responsibility did to her and trying to balance his myriad romantic interests leaves Shane at a crossroads. This could be just another coming-of-age story, but by viewing the role of depression and the legacy of long term mental health struggles within First Nations communities, filmmaker Adam Garnet Jones gave us a genuinely felt and vital debut feature. — Sara Century

Cloudburst (2011)

The elderly Dottie is placed in a nursing home by her daughter, but her partner of many years, Stella, comes and gets her so they can get married in Nova Scotia. This leads to a road trip in which they pick up a young hitchhiker traveling to see his dying mother. Stella slowly accepting that Dottie is aging and that she will inevitably lose her soon is the ultimate drive of the film and it’s every bit as heartbreaking and beautiful as it sounds. That said, there’s still a lot of humor in this film and the touching dynamic of longtime partners in their later years trying to have the wedding so long denied them is expertly portrayed by industry greats Olympia Dukakis and Brenda Ficker. — Sara Century

The Celluloid Closet (1995)

This fun documentary is based on a book by Vito Russo, who was involved in the creation of the documentary. The Celluloid Closet dives deep into the history of Hollywood, especially during the Golden Age of film, to unearth the stories and scandals of LGBTQ+ actors and their impact on the film industry. With archival film footage, news accounts and even some first-hand stories and gossip, this documentary tells the heartaches, triumphs and struggles of LGBTQ+ actors trying to live authentically and make their mark on the entertainment industry. Reading between the lines of the journals, letters and other documents written by some of the most famous (and closeted) actors in Hollywood gives LGBTQ+ viewers a sense of the valuable contributions of these actors and what their private lives were really like. — Sonya Iryna

The Pass (2016)

Two young professional football players named Ade and Jason have been in a prestigious football academy since early childhood. Sharing a hotel room the night of a big game at the age of 19, the two kiss and the moment sends echoes throughout the next decade as the struggle of remaining closeted carries through. This film touches on the importance of team sports for so many while also giving us a complicated, sensual relationship between its protagonists. Jason and Ade’s unresolved feelings for one another make up so much of the tension in this film and their chemistry is off-the-charts. — Sara Century

Naz & Maalik (2015)

Naz and Maalik are two closted Muslim teenagers who have recently begun a romantic relationship in secret. The film follows them as they spend time together one long afternoon, unknowingly trailed by FBI agents due to some trouble they’ve landed themselves in. While the two grow closer, the threat of being found out looms. The relationship between Naz and Maalik is where the story truly shines, spotlighting their differences and then forgetting them entirely as the two share the joys of secret queer romance. Lengthy segments full of revealing dialogue are the film’s greatest strength as we get to know these characters better with every scene. — Sara Century

How to Win at Checker Every Time (2015)

At the opening of the movie, we meet a tough gangster named Oat, who almost immediately plunges us back into the memories of his troubled youth. Orphaned at an early age and living with an aunt, Oat’s hero is his openly gay brother Ek, whose boyfriend Jai appears regularly. Ek supports his family via sex work and lives in fear that he might get drafted to service and be forced to leave his life behind. Meanwhile, Oat is captivated by Ek’s queer community and forms new bonds within it. Bittersweet and complicated, How to Win at Checkers Every Time is an emotional story that keeps an open mind towards the choices its characters are forced to make in life. — Sara Century

Gun Hill Road (2011)

When convict Enrique returns to his family after a lengthy stint in prison, he returns to a wife and child that aren’t who he demands that they be. He becomes increasingly angry as his child quietly transitions behind the scenes, trying to keep it a secret from him. He and Vanessa go through several confrontations and Enrique must grapple with the question of whether or not he can be the father his child needs. Though this film does come with a trigger warning due to the physical and emotional violence her character deals with, Harmony Santana is brilliant in the role of Vanessa and her moments of gender euphoria are beautiful. Gun Hill Road isn’t the easiest watch, but there is something in it that rings painfully true, regardless. — Sara Century

Bit (2019)

Vampire stories have long carried elements of queerness, dating at least as far back as the novella Carmilla in 1872. These stories generally entail a lot of angst and death, but it need not always be that way. Case in point, in Bit, the teenage Laurel moves to LA and runs headfirst into a group of cool vampires who practice intersectional feminism. The vamps welcome her into their group, but of course, their murdery ways leave Laurel feeling conflicted. Laurel is played here by Supergirl’s Nicole Maines and the great casting is just one thing that makes this quirky horror comedy as fun as it is. — Sara Century

Women Who Kill (2016)

If you’ve ever read a gripping true crime novel and then slowly began to suspect that a certain person you know could secretly be a serial killer, then the plot of Women Who Kill will hit a chord. Two exes, Morgan and Jean, still living together despite their breakup, host a popular true crime podcast together. Morgan meets a mysterious woman who she begins dating, but immediately clues are dropped that lead her to suspect that her new love interest might be behind a grisly series of murders. Mostly intended as a tongue-in-cheek romp, Women Who Kill also manages to speak to that hidden anxiety inside each of us that asks us how well we truly know the people around us. — Sara Century

Chutney Popcorn (1999)

When Sarita is devastated by the discovery that she is infertile, her lesbian sister Reena impulsively offers to be her surrogate. She takes on this responsibility in hopes of pleasing her mother, who has long disapproved of Reena’s lesbianism and considers her to be selfish. Reena’s girlfriend Lisa is appalled that no one consulted her on this major life change and though she tries to be present throughout the pregnancy, Reena’s commitment to being truly there for her family leaves her feeling ignored. This film is about the complexities of family and relationships, but it’s also a lot about humor, personal choice and how our choices can both challenge and strengthen our bonds. — Sara Century

Outrage (2009)

Outrage is a documentary that looks at openly gay and closeted politicians who were creating and voting on laws restricting the rights of LGBTQ+ people. With in-depth interviews, news clips and detailed information about the legislative process and what laws were in place at that time that impacted the LGBTQ+ community, Outrage puts a spotlight on the powerful politicians who make decisions about the lives of LGBTQ+ people. It also points out the conflict of interest that occurs when LGBTQ+ politicians decide to vote for laws that are designed to limit or take away the rights of LGBTQ+ people. 

This documentary is a great primer on how laws get written, the process necessary to get them to the Congress for a vote and what the voting process is like. — Sonya Iryna

Carol (2015)

Carol is a very popular movie starring Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara that tells the story of two women falling in love despite the cultural taboo of being openly LGBTQ+ in the 1950s. It’s based on a novel called The Price Of Salt by Patricia Highsmith. Carol, a glamorous wealthy housewife trapped in an unhappy marriage, meets young aspiring photographer Therese at the department store where Therese works. Carol’s marriage is crumbling because of her affairs with other women and her husband is threatening to expose her in order to get custody of their daughter. A complicated relationship ensues where both Carol and Therese have to figure out if they’re willing to pay the price to live authentically in a time of rigid moral constructs for women. — Sonya Iryna

Finding quality LGBTQ+ content is hard--finding it without having to subscribe to fifty different niche streaming services makes it even harder. Fortunately, thanks to the demand for affirming shows and movies, even the free services are curating LGBTQ+ related and created content. Free movies can be found across a variety of apps, but between Tubi TV, Crackle, and YouTube, some LGBTQ+-made gems and all-time classics are waiting for your viewing pleasure. Here are ten of the very best currently available for the cost of pressing play.

Anyone But Me (2008-2012)

During the window after the debut of YouTube but before the popularity of Netflix’ streaming services, independent creatives were given the opportunity to produce films and shows for online consumption that would likely have been difficult to greenlight through the studio system. Considering LGBTQ+ representation is still extremely limited, there was an explosion of indie queer programming in the late 00s that helped shape the lives of a generation.  Anyone but Me from Tina Cesa Ward and Susan Miller is one of those series. The series focuses on sixteen-year-old Vivian (Rachael Hip-Flores), a lesbian who moves out of New York City to Westchester and tries to maintain her relationship with her girlfriend Aster (Nicole Pacent) while starting in a new school, running into childhood friends, and adjusting to her new life out of the city.

Watch Anyone but Me on YouTube

Bit (2019)

The intersectional feminist vampire movie of your dreams, Brad Michael Elmore’s Bit was a standout at festivals like Outfest, but was quietly released on major VOD platforms around the start of quarantine. Starring Nicole Maines (Supergirl) as Laurel, the story follows a young trans woman moving to Los Angeles, only to find herself in the throes of a cabal of vampires under the leadership of a woman named Duke. Unlike the vampires of yesteryear, these vampires revel in their monstrosity and target those who deserve to have their blood spilled for a change.

Watch Bit on Tubi TV

Booksmart (2019)

Booksmart follows the tale of two best friends who are preparing to say goodbye to high school. When the realize that they didn't fully live while in their four years of high school, they take to a night of partying and participating in some firsts. One of the friends in particular explores the fluidity of her sexuality, or tries to at least. 

Booksmart is now available on Freevee. 

But I’m a Cheerleader (2001)

Stop whatever you're doing and put on Jamie Babbit's feature debut,  But I'm a Cheerleader  (also featured in our best free movies online story). Easily one of the most groundbreaking LGBTQ+ films ever made, Natasha Lyonne, Clea DuVall, Melanie Lynskey, Dante Basco, Eddie Cibrian, Cathy Moriarty, RuPaul, Mink Stole, Kip Pardue, Michelle Williams, and Bud Cort join forces in pink and blue to deliver a message about acceptance, the dangers of conversion therapy, and an appreciation of camp cinema. There are few films that should be required viewing for anyone who loves movies, but this is definitely one of them.

Watch But I'm a Cheerleader on Tubi TV

Bwoy (2016)

Brad (Anthony Rapp) is having a rough go of it. After he and his wife Marcia (De’Adre Aziza) lose their son, their lives begin to fall apart. Brad quickly finds solace in an online love connection with Yenny (Jimmy Brooks), a young Jamaican man. Brad’s first foray into the world of gay dating quickly turns to obsession, with the film playing out largely on smartphone and computer screens years before the pandemic made it cool.  Bwoy isn’t afraid to tackle the difficult realities surrounding interracial relationships in the queer community, as well as the way people use the internet to manipulate the perception of those around them.

Watch Bwoy on Tubi TV

Carmilla (2014-2016)

As we all know, there’s no such thing as a heterosexual vampire. A modern reimagining of the novella of the same name by Sheridan Le Fanu, Carmilla is a Canadian single-frame web series co-created by Jordan Hall, Steph Ouaknine, and Jay Bennett starring Elise Bauman and Natasha Negovanlis, produced by Kotex. In the series, the 330-year-old Carmilla is a college student living on a campus with a serious missing girl problem. No one suspects Carmilla is responsible except for Carmilla’s roommate Laura. Fans watched season after season to see if Laura was going to rat out her vampire roommate or if they would--as plenty of fanfic writers hoped they would--fall in love. The series was so popular, it later lead to the creation of a movie in 2017. 

Watch Carmilla on YouTube

District (2018)

District is a film showcasing the story of gay men of color trying their best to discover their self-worth, while also trying to navigate the hustling culture of their neighborhood. As an added bonus for Real World and Basketball Wives fans, the movie features the one and only Tami Roman.  

Watch District on The Roku Channel. 

The Gay Deceivers (1969)

Decades before I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry made an offensively unfunny movie about straight men pretending to be gay in order to cheat the system, there was The Gay Deceivers. Danny and Elliot, are two friends who pretend to be a couple in order to dodge the draft, going as far as moving into a gay apartment building to throw the Army surveillance off their trail. It’s a camp classic with hilarious lines but more importantly, features an iconic performance from Michael Greer, one of the first openly gay actors to appear in major Hollywood films.

Watch The Gay Deceivers on Tubi TV

Gayby (2012)

Based on the award-winning short film of the same name, Gayby tells the story of a straight hot yoga instructor named Jenn and her best friend Matt, a gay comic-book writer. Now, single in their 30s and feeling like life is passing them by, the duo decides to fulfill a longstanding promise to have a child together and co-parent. The only catch? Jenn wants to have a baby the old-fashioned way and the two must figure out a way to have sex despite Matt being gay. It’s a really sweet movie about the ways friendships evolve as we grow older and it's well worth the watch.

Watch Gayby on Tubi TV

G.B.F. (2013)

From the brilliant mind behind Jawbreaker, Darren Stein’s 2013 foray back into teen movies follows two closeted teens named Tanner and Brent who attend a high school run by three women in charge of the powerful cliques. Brent devises a plan to come out at prom and solidify himself as the most popular boy at school, knowing that the latest trend for teen girls is to find themselves a G.B.F. or a gay best friend. However, Brent’s plan backfires when Tanner is inadvertently outed in front of the whole school, causing the three girls to fight for his hand in gay best friendship. If you’re a fan of edgy teen comedies, this is the one for you.

Watch  G.B.F. on Tubi TV

Geography Club (2013)

Geography Club is a gay coming-of-age story about a group of teens who hang out in high school, meeting to discuss the highs and lows of being who they truly are. While they meet under the guise of geography, they hardly talk about atlases and maps. 

Geography Club is available to stream on The Roku Channel.  

I Am Divine (2013)

Legendary drag performer and muse of filmmaker John Waters, I Am Divine is a documentary providing an intimate look at the career of Divine, and the personal life of Harris Glenn Milstead. Featuring interviews with Milstead’s family, John Waters, and many of the surviving Dreamlanders, I Am Divine is a moving celebration of one of drag’s most important and groundbreaking icons, and the undeniable queen of the midnight movie. 

Watch I Am Divine on Tubi TV

I Want What I Want (1972)

Trans representation in cinema is pretty damn terrible if we’re being honest, but there are a handful that rise above the top and offer a genuinely thoughtful approach to telling a trans story. Based on the book of the same name, I Want What I Want is an out-of-print movie lost to time and it’s a terrible shame because it is one of the most sincere presentations of a trans-affirming film ever made. Yes, there are some aspects that haven’t aged well considering it’s nearly fifty years old, but even the decision to have a cis woman (Anne Heywood) play the trans woman lead is groundbreaking considering we’re still putting male actors in bad wigs and calling it “cinema” in 2021. With the constant debates surrounding physical vs. digital media, it’s important to remember films like I Want What I Want would be completely wiped out of history if it were not for internet preservation as the film has been out of print since before many of us reading this were alive.

Watch I Want What I Want on YouTube 

Tampa Baes

Tampa Baes follows a group of young lesbian friends in Tampa Bay, Florida. This is an interesting and unique venture in the reality TV space, and may provide a break for those seeking a break from scripted television. 

Tampa Baes season 1 is currently availbe to stream for free on Freevee. 

At the tail end of summer, movie fans are got a treat with Bottoms, an LGBTQ+ comedy that has been described by its creators as "Gay High School Fight Club." The advanced buzz on the movie has us ranking it as one of the last hidden gems of the summer season, but just how and where can you watch Bottoms?

Bottoms comes from the team behind the 2020 indie darling Shiva Baby, Emma Seligman and Rachel Sennott, with some already calling it "an instant high school comedy classic."

Read on to see how you can watch Bottoms right now.

Is Bottoms streaming?

Yes, Bottoms is available to stream right now for anyone that is a subscriber to MGM Plus. The streaming service is available as both a standalone platform or as a Prime Video channel.

If you don't want to pay for a monthly subscription to watch Bottoms, then you are going to have to buy the movie through digital on-demand (renting is not an option at this time). Bottoms is available through Prime Video and Google Play.

What else you need to know about Bottoms

Here is the official synopsis for Bottoms:

"In this refreshingly unique comedy, two girls, PJ and Josie, start a fight club as a way to lose their virginities to cheerleaders. And their bizarre plan works! The fight club gains traction, and soon the most popular girls in school are beating each other up in the name of self-defense. But PJ and Josie find themselves in over their heads and in need of a way out before their plan is exposed."

Emma Seligman directs from the script she co-wrote with Rachel Sennott, who also stars in the movie alongside The Bear's Ayo Edebiri. The rest of the cast includes Dagmara Domińczyk, Havana Rose Liu, Kaia Gerber, Marshawn Lynch, Miles Fowler, Nicholas Galitzine, Punkie Johnson and Ruby Cruz.

Bottoms has received stellar reviews, with the movie being "Certified Fresh" on Rotten Tomatoes with a score of 90% positive. It has also been recognized for two Film Independent Spirit Awards, including Best Screenplay and Best Breakthrough performance for Marshawn Lynch.

Check out the Bottoms trailer directly below to get a preview of what Bottoms is all about.

Netflix has plenty of LGBTQ+ programming ranging from historically educational to downright fun, so consume as much queer content as your eyeballs can handle... Check out some of the best, but in no way exhaustive, gay offerings from Netflix’s LGBTQ+ category. We'll be updating this guide so do keep checking back for more and more LGBTQ+ shows on Netflix...

Black Doves (2024)

It's great to see a real kick-ass, brilliant-at-fighting, hard-as-nails gay character who's also loveable and caring! And that's exactly what we got from Ben Whishaw when he played assassin Sam in the hit spy thriller series Black Doves alongside Keira Knightley and Sarah Lancashire. As well as being a killer, Sam was also super sensitive and was always trying to process and save his relationship with on/off boyfriend Michael (Omari Douglas). The great news is Sam will be back as Netflix has commissioned Black Doves season 2 where Ben Whishaw will again be in the thick of the action as Sam. It really can't come quick enough! 

Femme (2023)

This heart-in-your-mouth thriller has won much praise and more than a few awards for its tension-filled scenes and amazing performances by its two main stars Nathan Stewart-Jarrett and George MacKay. It's nail-biting time from the very start as a London drag queen gets queer-bashed by a psychotic thug, then later tries to get a cunning revenge on his attacker. Yes it's very violent and sexually graphic in places but always fantastically gripping as you watch the intrigue of their warped relationship play out. You'll see George MacKay as never before. His character Preston is a complete headcase who's homophobic when with his criminal mates yet totally closeted and struggling with his feelings for men. Nathan too is wonderful as he takes Jules from being the flamboyant drag queen performer Aphrodite and friendly gay flat mate to pretending to be a streetwise ex con to get close to Preston. What a pairing and what amazing drama! 

Unicorns (2023)

As with Femme (see above) the story in Unicorns features a romance between a supposedly straight lad and a drag star with many ups and downs along the way, but unlike Femme this movie is perhaps a little more tender as the straight lad is far more likeable, sympathetic and less violent. Former EastEnders star Ben Hardy plays Essex car mechanic and single dad Lee Tilson who during a night out unexpectedly finds himself in an underground gay club for the Asian community. There he spots drag star Aysha (Jason Patel) and starts to flirt not realising Ayesha is actually a man. Initially disgusted, Lee is still intrigued and later takes up an offer from Aysha to become her driver to take her to gigs all over the country. The two gradually become close again and romantic sparks are sown! But both are of course hiding double lives, Ayesha from her Muslim family in Manchester, and Lee from his mates, dad and estranged partner Emma. It's a very sweet and endearing love story, almost fairytale, and we'd highly recommend giving a watch...

Dead Boy Detectives (2024)

Dead Boy Detectives is set in the same fantasy world of Neil Gaiman's Sandman as it follows teen sleuths Edwin (George Rexstrew) and Charles (Jayden Revri), who happen to be ghosts and have set up a detective agency for those in the spirit world in need of mysteries to be solved. Edwin died in 1916, while Charles met his end in 1989. But it's Edwin who so obviously has hidden gay feelings and can't quite act on them as he was brought up in an era where that sort of thing was most definitely repressed. But as the pair set out to solve various cases, they end up in a small coastal town in America where Edwin comes across a supernatural being The Cat King, played by Lukas Gage, who's out and proud and most certainly has his eyes on Edwin...

Schitt's Creek (2015-2020)

Schitt’s Creek is a comedy that follows the misadventures of a rich family who suddenly find themselves out of pocket and forced to move to a small rural town called Schitt’s Creek. Of course things turn hilarious as there are misunderstandings and mishaps with their new neighbours throughout the six seasons. The show features many now-iconic characters but the standout star is the openly-gay series creator, Daniel Levy, who plays the family's pansexual son, David Rose. Him being forced to live in the middle of nowhere makes for so many fish-out-of-water moments, but the show does explore his predicaments with quite a lot of sensitivity which is very endearing. Daniel's dad Eugene Levy plays his Schitt's Creek father Johnny Rose, while Home Alone icon  Catherine O'Hara is mum Moira Rose, and Annie Murphy is Daniel's sister Alexis Rose. Emily Hampshire (The Rig), Chris Elliot, Sarah Levy and Jennifer Robertson also star.

* All six seasons of Schitt's Creek are also streaming on Hulu.

EastSiders (2012-2019)

This dark comedy series from Kit Williamson got its start on YouTube, but was later shown through Logo TV and Vimeo before finding a home at Netflix. Set in Silver Lake, Los Angeles, EastSiders follows Thom (Van Hansis) and Cal (Williamson) as they navigate their lives, community, substance abuse issues, and relationships. The mega-popular series has been praised for its vulnerable portrayal of LGBTQ+ relationships and last year earned two Emmy awards for Outstanding Casting for a Drama or Digital Drama Series and Outstanding Guest Performer for a Digital Daytime Drama Series (Lin Shaye).

Edge of Seventeen (1998)

Not to be confused by the 2016 film of a similar title, Edge of Seventeen is a groundbreaking coming of age story about a gay teen in 1984 Sandusky, Ohio from David Moreton and Todd Stephens. As pop stars like Boy George and Annie Lennox of the Eurythmics began smashing gender roles, 17-year-old Eric begins to come to terms with who he is, and what he desires all while capturing the spirit of a John Hughes movie, but a hell of a lot gayer.

The Perfection (2018)

First things first, the LGBTQ+ community is notoriously divided on The Perfection, which might be even more of a reason to give it a watch. Arguably one of the closest things we’ve gotten as a modern exploitation horror movie, The Perfection features stunning performances from Allison Williams and Logan Browning, and a script with more twists than a rollercoaster. Just when you think you know what’s coming next, the rug gets pulled out from underneath and you’re left guessing until the final credits.

Pose (2018-2021)

Thanks to Netflix’s relationship with FX, those without cable are fortunate enough to have access to one of the most important television series of all time. Pose (shown on BBC2 in the UK) is centered around New York City’s ballroom scene in the 1980s and the communities and families that were built because of it. For three seasons, the Emmy award winning show was a beacon for inclusivity showcasing queer and trans people of color as genuine human beings rather than punchlines, stereotypes, or monsters (for an elaboration, see Disclosure). Pose elevates the narrative surrounding queer and trans people, and isn’t afraid to showcase the nuanced realities of an oft-forgotten community with respect. Pose is a show that opened eyes, changed lives, and we are all better for it. There are three seasons of Pose to enjoy.

Monsoon (2019)

Directed by openly gay filmmaker Hong Khaou, Monsoon is a beautiful drama about a British Vietnamese man named Kit (Henry Golding of Crazy Rich Asians fame) who visits his home country thirty years after his family escaped Saigon as refugees after the Vietnam War. It’s touching to see a story about a gay man learning more about the truth of his identity, but knowing full well who he is as a gay person. Kit’s story is more than his sexuality, it’s about discovering the whole of his heritage and what was left behind when his family fled. 

Disclosure (2020)

Let’s just cut right to the chase — transgender representation in film and television can be problematic. As stated in the documentary Disclosure and cited from GLAAD study, 80 percent of Americans don't actually know a transgender person, meaning many people develop their thoughts and opinions on trans people based on what they see in media. Serving somewhat as “Trans Representation 101,” the documentary presents a historical look at Hollywood's portrayal of transgender people and how these portrayals have real-life impact on the treatment and lives of the transgender community.

Mucho Mucho Amor (2020)

A hero hailing from Puerto Rico and a cultural phenomenon in the Latine community, astrologer/actor/dancer/writer/television personality Walter Mercado was undoubtedly one of the most fascinating people on the planet. For decades, Mercado hosted an astrological prediction show on Spanish speaking cable channels, that was less Miss Cleo and more Liberace. Mercado flaunted elaborate costumes and capes that would rival Elton John, and despite his flamboyant expression, was beloved the world over. The documentary is a celebration of Mercado’s life and impact on the Latine community, but also the complicated history of an icon.

Sex Education (2019 - 2024)

Trying to figure out sexualities during our teen years is tough, but for high school student Otis who lives with his sex therapist mother, a lifetime of frank discussions and education has turned him into somewhat of a teenage sexpert. Once his class gets wind, he joins up with the resident “bad influence” girl, Maeve, and starts an underground sex therapy clinic. Otis’ best friend Eric Effiong (Ncuti Gatwa) is proudly Black and gay, and Sex Education allows him the space to be a truly multi-faceted character rather than a stereotype. Season 2 explores Eric’s story even more and has quickly become one of the most progressive shows for teens available. In Season 3 of Sex Education things have changed at the fictional British school. Headmaster Mr. Groff has been replaced by a new headmistress who has introduced a uniform and wants the students to adopt a new attitude to put the school back on the map!

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018-2020)

The reboot of the 1980s cartoon series of the same name, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power might be the intentionally queerest animated series ever made (sorry, Steven Universe) and has captured the hearts of queer people from all ages and gender identities. It’s a show teaching people to find the power within themselves, to find the silver lining in all situations, and perhaps most importantly, the power of finding your chosen family. Created by openly queer Noelle Stevenson, She-Ra is groundbreaking queer entertainment for all-ages, and season 5 is a boundary shattering sensation.

What Keeps You Alive (2018)

Colin Minihan is one of the most promising up-and-coming genre directors, and the highly suspenseful, psychological horror film What Keeps You Alive is arguably his best thus far. Jackie and Jules celebrate their first wedding anniversary by visiting a remote cabin in the woods, and it soon becomes apparent that there’s something very, very wrong with Jackie, and that Jules may not actually know her wife as well as she once believed.

Wynonna Earp (2015)

I’m sorry, but there is no heterosexual explanation for a supernatural Western horror show starring a lady gunslinger who fights demons. While the show gets its name from the eldest great-great-granddaughter of the legendary lawman Wyatt Earp, it's Wynonna’s little sister Waverly that threw “shippers” into a frenzy. Waverly falls for a local lesbian cop named Nicole but unlike most shows, Wynonna Earp was created through a queer lens. The gaze for Waverly and Nicole’s relationship is distinctly queer and fans can’t get enough of it.

The Mitchells vs. The Machines (2021)

You didn't think we were going to make an LGBTQ+ Netflix list and not include the most groundbreaking piece of LGBTQ+ cinematic animation, did you? The Mitchells vs. The Machines is first and foremost a genuinely wonderful family adventure comedy that is sure to quickly become an all-time favorite, but having a queer teen girl act as the film's protagonist is just the robot apocalypse defeating cherry on top. Katie Mitchell is unapologetically queer, but her anxiety, insecurities about her future, and desire to make weird art feels relatable without being stereotypical. The fact she's included in an animated family feature, a genre notorious for queer exclusion, will genuinely change lives. This movie rules and we're so lucky to have it.

Single All The Way (2021)

Single All The Way gives you a lovely gay romance, with complications of course, to wallow in for Christmas. Desperate to avoid his family nagging him about his perpetual single status, Peter (Ugly Betty’s Michael Urie) persuades his best friend Nick (Will Philemon Chambers) to join him for the holidays and engage in a little fake dating to appease them. But as Peter's mother Carole has set up Peter on a blind date with her handsome spin instructor (Luke McFarlane), the fake romance plan begins to unravel. Also in the unhelpful mix is single Aunt Sandy, played by The White Lotus star Jennifer Coolidge.

"There's pageantry, wine, hunky Santas, a little bit of deception and a whole lotta do-gooding,’ laughs Michael Urie. ‘Peter’s parents are played by Barry Bostwick and Kathy Najimy, a combination that scientists agree can only produce gay sons who love Christmas. Peter's spent many Christmases perfecting choreography to a Britney Spears Christmas song with his nieces. He has a fern named Judith, is trapped in a social media job he doesn't love and is always single when he goes home for the holidays!’

Heartstopper (2022 to 2023)

Shy secondary school pupil Charlie Spring (Joe Locke) gets allocated the seat next to ‘rugby king’ Nick Nelson (Kit Connor) in their form period at the start of this emotional drama, and it ends up changing their lives. These two very different lads become best pals, leading Nick to question if his feelings for Charlie go beyond friendship. "Their relationship hits both by surprise - especially Nick," says Kit Connor, who starred as young Elton John in hit movie Rocketman. ‘Originally it’s just a friendship, and they enjoy spending time with each other. That’s when Nick realises it maybe something more."

Joe adds: "From the moment Charlie sees Nick, he has a crush on him, but to him it just seems like he’s “pining after a straight boy”. He doesn’t see it as a realistic crush, which partly stems from his low self-esteem, but also, quite a lot of young gay people have that experience, where they don’t feel like their crushes will happen."

Adapted from a popular comic book series, Heartstopper includes some animation to illustrate emotions. Charlie and Nick are constantly texting and have other school friends and family to call upon for advice. There are some surprise cameos in the eight-parter to look out for too! While Nick and Charlie inevitably face major obstacles as they navigate the tricky territory of falling in love, the story is ultimately uplifting… 

"It’s a realistic story told in an optimistic way,’ says acting newcomer Joe. "A lot of shows portray the more negative aspects of being gay, but it’s important to show the beauty of it, and all the lovely things that come along with it."

Kit adds: "It looks at the world through rose-tinted spectacles. It’s also just a good, old-fashioned love story."

Heartstopper season 2 sees NIck and Charlie's relationship go further as they are fully open at school. There's also a fun school trip to Paris and plenty more twists and turns

Uncoupled (2022)

Join Neil Patrick Harris in eight-part comedy drama Uncoupled set in New York as he plays Michael Lawson who’s heading towards his 50th birthday thinking that he's loved up and happy in a relationship with his partner Colin (Tuc Watkins). Then Colin suddenly moves out and Michael must cope with losing his soulmate and becoming a single gay man of a certain age in New York. There's fun, heartache and some endearingly funny moments.

It's A Sin (2021)

The lives of three gay friends at the height of the 1980s AIDS epidemic are followed in the uplifting and heartbreaking five-parter It's A Sin, written by Russell T. Davies and starring Keeley Hawes, Stephen Fry and Neil Patrick Harris among others. It's also full of all the great music of the Eighties. It al; kicks off in 1981 as wannabe actor Ritchie (Years and Years singer Olly Alexander), party boy Roscoe (Omari Douglas) and shy Welsh lad Colin (Callum Scott Howells) end up sharing a London pad together with their friend Jill (Lydia West). They call their new home The Pink Palace which becomes party central with plenty of shenanigans and sex going on.  But soon news of a mystery illness hits the headlines, a deadly virus that casts a devastating shadow over all their lives…

* It's A Sin was shown on Channel 4 in the UK and on HBO Max in the US. It's now available on both Netflix and Disney Plus.

Firefly Lane (2021- 2023)

While Firefly Lane, based on the bestselling Kristen Hannah novel of the same name, is essentially about a three-decades long friendship between two women Tully Hart (Katherine Heigl) and Kate Mularkey (Sarah Chalke) who first meet at school in 1974, there's a heartwarming gay story running throughout both seasons. Kate's older brother Sean Mularkey (Jason McKinnon) is secretly gay for much of the first two decades that play out. Tully finds out when she's a teenager when she sees Sean and a local lad smooching but keeps it a secret for many years, not even telling her best friend Kate. Then when Sean does eventually come out as gay — as a married father — Kate's shocked that her best pal knew but is impressed with her loyalty to Sean. 

Special (2019-2021)

Heartwarming, poignant, touching, funny and special are just some of the words to describe this hidden gem of a comedy drama which follows Ryan, a twentysomething gay man with cerebral palsy as he navigates work, relationships and independence in LA. He’s played by Ryan O’Connell, who created the series based on his own experiences as recounted in his memoir Special: And Other Lies We Tell Ourselves. When we first meet him, Ryan still lives at home with his protective mum Karen (Jessica Hecht, best known as Susan in Friends), but he decides it’s time to stop letting his disability rule his life so he branches out on his own by beginning an internship at an online content creation company, moving into his own place and taking his first steps into the world of dating and sex. There are two series of eight episodes, which are around 15 minutes apiece, to watch. 

Smiley (2022)

Barcelona provides the backdrop to this eight-part Spanish drama where the phrase ‘opposites attract’ is the order of the day. Carlos Cuevas plays Alex, a hunky bartender, gym bunny and frequent user of dating apps who leaves a ranty voicemail for a guy he’s been seeing. Unfortunately, he’s dialled the wrong number so movie-lover and architect Bruno (Miki Esparbé) picks up the message and calls Alex to let him know of the mistake. The pair end up talking and decide to meet at the bar where Alex is working. At first they don’t think they are right for each other, but could their first impressions turn out to be wrong? 

Read More:

Best LGBTQ+ shows and movies to watch on Disney Plus in 2021
Best LGBTQ+ shows and movies to watch free online in 2021
Best LGBTQ+ shows and movies to watch on HBO Max in 2021
Best LGBTQ+ shows and movies to watch on Apple TV+ in 2021  

LGBTQ+ representation in television is improving but always an ongoing concern. There's no denying that there is a lot more content available today than ever before. In today’s world, movies and TV featuring queer characters are far from unheard of, though the quality of the representation continues to vary. 

Although Amazon Prime Video doesn’t have the largest LGBTQ+ library, it’s still full of gems. Here's our guide to some of the best gay shows, characters and movies to enjoy...

Red, White & Royal Blue

Red, White & Royal Blue is a transatlantic gay rom-com movie. When Alex Claremont-Diaz (The Kissing Booth 2 star Taylor Zakhar Perez) is sent by his mother, US President Ellen Claremont (Uma Thurman), to represent her at a royal wedding in England, she warns him not to do anything to spark an international incident.

Unfortunately, Alex has a long-running feud with Britain’s Prince Henry (Mary & George and Cinderella star Nicholas Galatzine), and the two have an explosive confrontation at the wedding that results in them knocking over the very expensive cake! With both countries caught in a PR disaster, a plan is formed for Alex and Henry to fake a high-profile friendship until the story dies down. Forced to spend time together, their mutual dislike turns into a surprising friendship - which then becomes something much deeper than either of them expected…

Although Alex and Henry try to keep their romance a secret lest they spark an even bigger scandal, the truth eventually gets out - and the couple must decide whether to risk everything to be together.

Red, White & Royal Blue launches on Prime Video on Friday August 11 2023.

Everybody’s Talking About Jamie

Based on the hit stage musical and inspired by a truly story, Everybody’s Talking About Jamie tells the story of Jamie New, a schoolboy who dreams of taking to the stage as a drag queen. While his mother Margaret (Sarah Lancashire) will do anything she can to support him, not everyone is quite so understanding, including his careers’ advisor Miss Hedge (Sharon Horgan) and his estranged father Wayne (Ralph Ineson). But Jamie isn’t about to let small-minded people stop him…

"It’s an uplifting coming of age story about a 16-year-old from Sheffield who’s trying to find his place in the world," says Max Harwood, who plays Jamie. "It’s filled with loads of crazy original songs and high-fashion moments, and some real British heart. It’s got something for everyone!"

After Margaret buys Jamie a pair of high heels for his birthday, his best friend Pritti (Lauren Patel) encourages him to follow his dreams and suggests that he come out as a drag queen at the school prom. Looking to put the rest of his drag persona together, Jamie then visits a shop run by retired drag queen Hugo (Richard E Grant), who used to perform as Loco Chanelle. Hugo senses a kindred spirit in Jamie, and agrees to mentor him in the art of drag…

"Richard is phenomenal in the role, he brought so much nuance and detail to it,’" says Max. "It’s so exciting that an actor like Richard, who has been Oscar-nominated, who has such an amazing list of credits, wants to add a film like Everybody’s Talking About Jamie to his CV. That says a lot about this source material and how good it is — it’s a fantastic story."

Appropriate Behavior

Our protagonist Brooklynite is left without a house or a job after being unceremoniously dumped by her partner, Maxine. Though Brooklynite hopes to rekindle their romance throughout much of the film, this is ultimately the story of how she finds her own path. Before Desiree Akhavan’s critically-acclaimed TV series The Bisexual, she wrote and directed this feature film, which combined a fantastic sense of comedic timing with heavier issues of coming out in an unsupportive environment and what happens when we are forced to move on.

Flack

Flack follows an American PR executive living in London named Robyn as she attempts to smooth over various PR catastrophes. Not exactly the most together person in her personal life, the bisexual Robyn navigates issues within her family and avoids emotional connections while competing to be the very best at her job. Held together by an incredible cast featuring industry greats like Anna Paquin, Sophie Okonedo, Sam Neill, Arinze Kene and Martha Plimpton, Flack is equal parts funny and disturbing while painting a compelling picture of a woman who lives her life under an incredible level of pressure.

The Watermelon Woman

Cheryl Dunye’s 1996 debut remains one of the more compelling queer works of the ‘90s, exploring themes of Black womanhood as it intersects with queerness. Following a young video store clerk who watches old movies and becomes compelled to discover more about the life of an actor who played stereotypical “maid” roles referred to as The Watermelon Woman, this film sees Cheryl exploring complicated identity issues, navigating toxic relationships, and finding a sense of community with her friends. Funny, insightful, charming, and confrontational, The Watermelon Woman excels by telling us the story of a woman finding herself by learning more about the history of other Black lesbians.

Picnic At Hanging Rock

Widely regarded as one of the greatest Australian novels ever written, the original Picnic At Hanging Rock drew inspiration from a true story of the disappearance of three school girls and their teacher after a short trip to Hanging Rock one afternoon. The 1975 film version and the TV series both worked to capture the dreaminess and ambiguity of the original novel. While subtextual lesbian vibes are all over this story in any incarnation, the modern remake becomes fundamentally about queerness as the story revolves around the various journeys of each of its protagonists and how they related to their now-missing classmates. Not only a surrealist beauty, Picnic At Hanging Rock has substance to spare and did a wonderful job of addressing the longstanding subtext of the story by simply making it text.

Happy Birthday, Marsha

Following the events leading up to the tragic and still-unsolved death of trans activist Marsha P. Johnson, Happy Birthday, Marsha is a work that pulls history into the present with its unique visual style and its heartfelt homage to an icon. Marsha is portrayed here by the great Mya Taylor (of Tangerine (2015) fame), who does an excellent job of humanizing a legend of LGBTQ+ activism. Though historical inaccuracies abound, it’s the performance and the sincerity behind the film that makes this short a must-see.

Homecoming

The first season of Homecoming utilized the inconsistency of memory to tell a nonlinear story about the nature of trust. Season two, with a mostly new cast, did much the same thing, only queerer. When a woman wakes up in a rowboat in the middle of a lake after (we later discover) ingesting a memory loss drug, she is forced to walk backwards through her life to attempt to discover who she is. A story about identity at its heart, Homecoming’s second season featured incredible performances from Janelle Monae, Hong Chau, and Joan Cusack as well as a heartbreaking love story between our baffled protagonist and the mysterious and morally complicated Audrey.

One Mississippi

While recovering from a double mastectomy, our hero Tig “Bavaro” (played by Tig Notaro) leaves her job as an LA radio host to move back to her hometown in Mississippi after she receives news that her mother will be taken off of life support after suffering a fall. Moving back in with her stepfather and brother, Tig must navigate complex issues of mourning while trying to readjust to life in a town that she long ago left behind. Utilizing Notaro’s lived experiences in surviving breast cancer to create a semi-autobiographical work full of charm, humor, and growth, One Mississippi is an underrated gem.

The Wilds

After surviving a plane crash while on the way to a women's empowerment retreat hosted by an organization known as The Dawn of Eve in Hawaii, a group of teenage girls are stranded on a desert island, unaware that their situation is being used as a social experiment orchestrated by the leader of The Dawn of Eve program. Scenes from the lives of the young women before the crash are intercut with a future in which they are being interrogated by the FBI for their involvement with The Dawn of Eve. The Wilds dives deep into characterization while granting us a series of revealing interactions among the women. The Wilds features a diverse cast and purposefully includes queer characters to tell its tale.

Four More Shots Please! 

Often touted as the desi version of Sex & The City, Amazon Prime’s first Indian original series that features all-female protagonists, Four More Shots Please! is important for many reasons, not the least of which is its queer representation. Among the core four characters, the bisexual Mangs truly stands out. Lighthearted and hilarious, this show is a real underrated great, and it’s the relationships between the four women at its center that makes it as fun as it is. Add the greatness of the straight-shooting Mangs to the mix and you’ve got a great LGBTQ+ friendly show that prides itself on its ability to let loose and have fun.

Read More:
• Best LGBTQ+ shows and movies on Netflix
• Best LGBTQ+ shows and movies to watch free online
• Best LGBTQ+ shows and movies to watch on Disney+
• Best LGBTQ+ shows and movies to watch on HBO Max
• Best LGBTQ+ shows and movies to watch on Apple TV+

The history of LGBTQ+ representation in film and on TV is a fascinating (and sometimes frustrating) one. Thankfully, progress has been made by top streaming channel Disney Plus. For instance, to celebrate Pride 2022, Disney Plus launched a curated Pride Collection of movies, short films and series to celebrate Pride. The Pride Collection is housed with all of the other Disney Plus collections on the site and will be updated on a regular basis.

Here, however, is our own curated list of Disney+ which includes many of the LGBT+ selections from the Pride Collection as well as other top shows, movies and favorite characters we've highlighted....

Out

Greg's life is full of love and he's just about to make a move to the big city with his boyfriend. The problem is that his parents surprise him to help with the move and Greg hasn't come out to them yet. This is a big secret and is putting a strain on his relationship with Manuel. Today is different though. With some help from his feisty little pup and a little bit of magic from a rainbow disco cat and dog, Greg learns that he has nothing to hide and that his parents love him no matter what.

This is a huge step for Disney as far as portraying LGBTQ+ characters. It's a sweet story about overcoming your fear and coming out to your parents. It sends the message that ultimately, your family just wants you to be happy and there's nothing wrong with being true to yourself. It's a great short film for all ages.  

Andor

The Star Wars franchise had been severely lacking in any LGBTQ+ characters in its movies and spin-offs, unless you think camp robot C3PO somehow counts, and who can take a guess at Chewbacca? Yet when spin-off series Andor arrived in September 2022 we got two fantastic female LGBTQ+ characters who were deeply in love amid their other preoccupation of fighting the Galactic Empire. Yes step forward Vel Sartha (Faye Marsay) and Cinta Kaz (Varada Sethu), leader and member of the rebel cell respectively, whoCassian Andor finds himself caught up with from epsiode 4 after his escape from Ferrix. Both were still alive by the end of the 12-parter too, so it looks like their romance hasn't died! 

Jungle Cruise

Jungle Cruise was so, so, so close to almost having a character say the words "I'm gay" on screen. While the film did ultimately come short of saying those words and the scene that features them is easy to cut for international markets that won't allow such things, it's hard to deny the importance of Jack Whitehall's McGregor Houghton. Brother to Lily (Emily Blunt), McGregor provides a good amount of comic relief and heart to a film that's already bursting with both of those things. His "coming out" scene with Frank (Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson) doesn't just serve to make us empathize further with his sister. Instead, it helps give him a key character point that makes him more than just "Lily's brother." 

Cruella

Sure, we might have roasted Disney a tiny bit in our Cruella review for once again patting themselves on the back for their "first" out gay character (for the seventh time) and not even having the decency to do anything beyond an implicit gay description. Still, Cruella's an all out banger with a fun queer character (and played by the lovely John McCrea), good dogs and some fashion that may literally be worth dying for. 

Praising anything featuring Cruella De Vil feels a little weird — especially given that she's one of the most loathed characters in Disney canon — but trust me on this: the retelling of this monster is worth your while. At the very least, it's fun looking at all the pretty set pieces and costumes while Emma Stone and Emma Thompson try to out act one another. At its best, it retcons the 101 Dalmatians story in a way that will leave you craving more in this complicated new universe. 

The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement

Here's the deal: The Princess Diaries 2: The Royal Engagement came out back in 2004, so you know there's no way that there was an LGBTQ+ on-screen relationship in any of the Princess Diaries movies. So, why is it on this list? A couple reasons: first, not to stereotype, but this bisexual writer has a very hearty appreciation for these films. Second, it's important to represent stories from different timeframes so we can see where we've been and where we hope to go. And, finally, we do get a (slim) scene where there's at least an acknowledgement of a gay couple in the film. 

While Mia (Anne Hathaway) and her best friend Lily (Heather Matarazzo) work with the Queen (literal queen Julie Andrews) and bodyguard Joe (Hector Elizondo) to find a potential suitor, Mia notes that the harp-playing Prince Antoine is a cutie. Joe's "his boyfriend thinks he's handsome also," receives a hearty "right on!" from both Mia and Lily. 

A throwaway scene? Sure. But throwaway scenes meant a lot to young queer folk when they were all we had.

High School Musical: The Musical: The Series

It's been over a decade since High School Musical was filmed at East High, so the drama department decides they want to revisit that moment in time, this time with a theatrical production called High School Musical: The Musical. This is a brand new cast of kids putting a new spin on your favorite characters from the original. It's jam-packed with some of your favorite songs from High School Musical, along with some new jams to groove out to. It's a fun, upbeat, musical series full of teenage drama on and off the stage.

Carlos (Frankie A. Rodriguez) is the fabulous, flamboyant, gay choreographer at East High School. While this character is fun and entertaining to watch, some might argue that this is a fairly cliche interpretation of what gay men are actually like. 

Gravity Falls

Join the adventurous twins Dipper and Mabel Pines as they battle evil and solve mysteries on their summer vacation with old Grunkle Stan in Gravity Falls, Ore. Dipper is the smarty pants, more mature twin and Mabel is the likeable, funny twin. It's fun to watch them go on outrageous adventures, make new allies, sniff out enemies and figure out the hidden mysteries of this small sleepy town. This a great animated series for the whole family and appropriate for all ages.

Onward

Onward is a complicated film to write about in the context of this list. While excuses can be made for The Princess Diaries — or even The Lodge — because it happened years ago, we should be past the point where we're tiptoeing around any of the letters in LGBTQ+. That said, this wouldn't be complete without acknowledging Pixar's first confirmed character in a same sex relationship. 

Which character is it? Well, it's the barely-there Officer Specter (voiced by Lena Waithe). The officer notes at one point that her girlfriend's daughter has her pulling her hair out. That's the big payoff. 

That obvious bitterness aside, Onward is a lovely, simple, inoffensive film. Probably plan on some tissues since it's Pixar, but you won't regret checking this one out. 

Andi Mack

Andi Mack is just about to hit her teen years and her urge to rebel and embody the angsty teen is stronger than ever. Along with her best friends Buffy and Cyrus, this fearsome threesome is ready to terrorize their parents and their school. However, Andi's big sister Bex is back in town and she's here to stay. When Bex was young, she was the poster child for rebellion, but now that she's older, she's started taking on a much more responsible outlook on life. Bex puts a serious damper on Andi and her friends' fun which takes a toll on her first year as a teenager.

Cyrus Goodman, one of Andi's best friends, made history as the first Disney character to ever say the words "I'm gay," out loud on television. Typically, if gay characters were represented at all, their sexual orientation was merely implied and not voiced. It took until 2017 for someone to utter those magic words, but better late than never Disney. We have high hopes that this will spark a trend and we'll begin to see more and more LGBTQ+ characters represented in our favorite Disney content in the years to come.

Star Wars Resistance

Star Wars Resistance follows the pilot Kazuda "Kaz" Xiono and his adventures aboard the large aircraft refueling station Colossus. He's been recruited by Poe Dameron to join the resistance and spy on the First Order and disguises himself as a mechanic on the Colossus. It's tough for him to keep his cover and he finds himself mixed up with ace racers, marauding pirates and the mysterious owner of the Colossus. His discoveries and comedic adventures bring him closer to what the First Order actually has in mind for the galaxy.

The makers of this animated series have confirmed that the show does contain a same-sex couple. They're the first confirmed same-sex couple to appear on screen, though not the first queer couple to appear in the Star Wars franchise. 

Loki

When Marvel’s Loki debuted, it featured a revelation that was one of the least-guarded secrets in the MCU: Loki was gender fluid. It makes sense, because despite Tom Hiddleston’s portrayal that we all know and love, Loki has taken many forms in the comics over the years. It’s not surprising that the trickster god doesn’t subscribe to gender norms, nor is it surprising that he’s attracted to men and women alike. If anyone was going to be the grand marshal of the Disney Plus Pride parade, it should be Loki. Watch out for Loki season 2 when the series arrives on Disney Plus on October 6 2023.

West Side Story

The Steven Spielberg remake of the 1961 classic West Side Story is a modern-day retelling of Romeo and Juliet with the two star crossed lovers being members of rival street gangs in New York. It’s a powerful story about how you can’t control who you love. The original movie featured a young tomboy, Anybodys, who wanted to be part of an all-male gang; in the 2021 remake, Anybodys is transgender and is played by non-binary actor Iris Menas.

Love, Victor

All three seasons of the Disney Plus hit Love, Victor are now available to stream. This spinoff from the hit movie Love, Simon follows Victor’s journey as he navigates the complex world of high school and the even more complex world of love. The final season sees Victor sorting out his feelings for Rahim and Benji while building new relationships as his time in high school comes to an end. It’s an epic story that plays out over three seasons of must-watch television. 

HBO Max has a solid library of new and classic LGBTQ+ shows and movies.

HBO Max launched in 2020 and quickly grew to become of the heavy hitters among streaming services. In just a couple of years HBO Max built a huge library of classic and new content filled with HBO classics and Max originals.

Many of the shows and films created under the Max originals banner focus on amplifying the stories of marginalized groups including the LGBTQ+ community. Today HBO Max has one of the best libraries of LGBTQ+ content including these shows and films.

Euphoria

Euphoria — adapted from the Israeli show of the same name — follows Rue Bennett (Zendaya) and her group of friends as they try to deal with the complicated business of high school. The story has been praised by writer BJ Colangelo for how it tells coming-of-age stories in a new light. Rue and Jules (Hunter Schafer) kick up a complicated relationship in the series’ first season, but their exploration will expand far beyond one another as things progress in the narrative. Nothing’s simple in Euphoria, which is what makes the series so exceptional. — Amelia Emberwing

Our Flag Means Death

Our Flag Means Death is a quirky romantic comedy that’s based on the life of a real man during the Golden Age of piracy. Stede Bonnet, (Rhys Darby), was a rich and titled member of the gentry of Barbados in the 1700s. He decides he wants a very different kind of life — becoming a pirate. He and his crew have some wild misadventures as he finds purpose, excitement and love on the high seas. Bonnet falls in love with another pirate, Captain Edward Teach, (Taika Waititi) who is fascinated by Bonnet. The series sparkles with great writing and perfectly timed comedy. The show was an instant hit with audiences who love the campy humor as much as the sweet love story that the show is built on. — Sonya Iryna 

Steven Universe

The Cartoon Network series Steven Universe has long been praised for a myriad of reasons. Near the top of that long list is how it opened the door to diversity and inclusion in kids’ shows. The series features a host of characters from all walks of life, including Ruby (Charlyne Yi) and Sapphire (Erica Luttrell). Though we don’t meet the lesbian Gems till the end of the first season, an embodiment of them is always around. Garnet (Estelle) — basically the leader of the Gems — is the fusion of the two. Their involvement, coupled with all the Black coded leads of the series, puts Steven Universe lightyears ahead of other shows when it comes to representation (whether for children or adults).  Even though fans were devastated when Steven Universe ended, all five seasons of the show plus the Steven Universe movie are available on HBO Max. — Amelia Emberwing

Batwoman

Despite experiencing the unique problem of losing its lead between season 1 and season 2, Batwoman has continued to impress on all fronts. The loss of Kate Kane (Ruby Rose) may have been jarring to some fans, but Ryan Wilder (Javicia Leslie) has stepped into the cowl as one of the most refreshing members of the Bat Family yet. The series has never shied away from being as gay as it wants to be (it’s on the CW, so that’s very gay™) but the addition of a Black lead means that they get to explore things in a way they’ve never done before. Season 2 takes an episode or two to find its footing, but with a 23-episode season, it feels like nothing on the grand scheme of things. While fans praised Javicia Leslie’s Batwoman, the show was cancelled after season 3.  All three seasons of Batwoman can be streamed on HBO Max.— Amelia Emberwing

Peacemaker

Peacemaker is an HBO Max Original series that is the first DC Extended Universe TV series. It was created by, written by and directed by James Gunn. It’s a spin off of the 2021 movie The Suicide Squad that focuses on DC superhero and unrepentant killer Christopher Smith, aka Peacemaker (John Cena). Leota Waller-Adebayo (Danielle Brooks) becomes entangled in a mission with Peacemaker where she eventually forms a cautious friendship with him and is repeatedly put into some morally ambiguous situations that she is conflicted about. Her wife, Keeya, (Elizabeth Ludlow) tries to help her maintain some perspective and her moral compass as Leota gets pulled deeper into Peacemaker’s violent world. — Sonya Iryna 

It’s a Sin

This British drama recently took America by storm thanks to HBO Max gaining the North American streaming rights. The five-part series spans from 1981-1991 and showcases a group of men and their friends as they live through the AIDS crisis in the UK. In addition to compelling storytelling and its raw and honest depiction of the dangers of HIV, the series is also credited for an uptick in HIV testing in the UK after its skyrocketing popularity. Written by cult favorite Russell T. Davies, best known for his work with Doctor Who, this short series made a big impact with fans. — Amelia Emberwing

Paris Is Burning

Paris is Burning is a classic documentary from 1990 that captures an important era in drag culture. It spans seven years in the mid-late 1980s and takes a deep dive into the African American and Latinx drag culture in NYC. Even though the documentary is a celebration of the fashion, culture and pageantry of drag it also delves into tough intersectional issues of race, class, homophobia and the experiences of trans people in the 1980s. It’s an important part of LGBTQ+ history caught on film. — Sonya Iryna 

The Flight Attendant

The Flight Attendant took the world by storm. Though it ended up missing out during awards season by somehow constantly being nominated for comedy, the series was praised by both consumers and critics alike. We may all be done with the gay best friend trope, but Shane Evans (Griffin Matthews) is so much more than that. The character is given more dimension both literally and figuratively — don’t worry, no spoilers here — and plays a major role in the series as a whole. He’s the first one there when Cassie’s (Kaley Cuoco) life starts to unravel, but he’s so much more than an archetype. All current seasons are available on HBO Max. — Amelia Emberwing

Betty

For those who saw Skate Kitchen (2018), this one’s for you! Betty is a series adaptation of the film, following a group of Gen Zers who are doing their best to stand out in the male dominated skateboard scene in New York. The series features much of the same cast, many of which have queer coded vibes (with Kirt being the only member of the group that’s explicity gay), but those implications may be more because of the Gen Z feel of the show than any direct intentions from the writers. It’s that very thing that makes Betty feel all the more real. The show was cancelled by HBO after just two seasons despite a nearly perfect approval rating from fans. Both seasons are still available to stream. — Amelia Emberwing

The Trans List

The 2016 documentary The Trans List focuses on 11 transgender Americans and how they navigate life in a country that often ostracizes and erases them. Major names include Supergirl’s Nicole Maines, Caitlin Jenner, Laverne Cox and more, but many critics noted that it was the "smaller" stories that resonated the most throughout the narrative. In addition to the positive critical reception, organizations like GLAAD sang the film’s praises as well. While The Trans List may not be as conventionally entertaining as some of the more pop culture-focused entries on this list, it is most certainly worth a watch. — Amelia Emberwing

The Lady and the Dale

History fans will love The Lady and The Dale, a docuseries that tells the story of Geraldine Elizabeth Carmichael. Liz Carmichael was a transwoman who formed the Twentieth Century Motor Car Corporation in 1973. The company was formed with a partner who had created a design for a unique fuel-efficient car that was supposed to get 70 miles to the gallon. At the time, the US was in the throes of a fuel crisis and the car Carmichael was promoting, the Dale, would have been a game-changer for Americans who were desperate for fuel efficient vehicles.  But under media scrutiny it was revealed the whole thing was a scam and the company and Carmichael were embroiled in scandal.

The show is a great snapshot of what life was like for LGBTQ+ people in the 1960s and 70s and the cultural barriers that made living authentically difficult. It’s also a fun true crime story that captures a unique moment in history. — Sonya Iryna

Unpregnant

Based on the novel of the same name, Unpregnant follows Veronica (Haley Lu Richardson) and her former friend Bailey (Barbie Ferreira) as they head out on a unique kind of adventure. After finding out that she can’t get an abortion in her home state of Missouri — and learning that the boy who knocked her up is against the idea of an abortion himself — Veronica and the coerced Bailey have to road trip to Albuquerque to get rid of the baby without her parents’ permission. This misadventure may not focus solely on its queer story, but that lends more to the normalcy of these stories than some might think. Bailey is already an out and proud lesbian before their adventure gets underway, but there’s a couple surprises for her on their little road trip! — Amelia Emberwing

Equal

Equal is a four-episode docu-series that takes an in-depth look at LGBTQ+ history and culture from the 1940s to the early 1970s. Each episode dives deep into the cultural attitudes towards LGBTQ+ people in a particular time period as well as laws targeting LGTBQ+. With interviews, archival footage and reenactments of key events, each episode shows the battles that early LGBTQ+ fought and the ground they gained as they paved the way for each future generation. 

The last episode in the series tells the story of the Stonewall Riot and the basis for the modern day Pride movement. Even though this series is only four episodes long it’s an important piece of LGBTQ+ history. — Sonya Iryna

Harley Quinn

Though Harley Quinn is a relatively new character in the DC Comics universe, having made her explosive debut in 1992's Batman: The Animated Series, she has quickly become one of the most beloved and recognizable faces in DC canon. Harley was originally created to be Joker's on again, off again girlfriend and sidekick, but soon her story started to evolve and by the time she had her own standalone comic book there was no question that she had feelings for a certain green-skinned plant loving villain named Ivy. 

The team behind the Harley Quinn animated series at HBO Max leaned heavily into Harley's relationship with Ivy in ways that weren't possible early on in the comics. Now she's a LGBTQIA+ icon and while she might toe the line between heroism and villainy, she's a hero to her fans who love seeing her embrace her truth. And with three seasons of the series in the books and more on the way, there's plenty of Harley for you to enjoy.  — Sarabeth Pollock

More LGBTQ+ content

• Best LGBTQ+ shows and movies on Disney Plus
• Best LGBTQ+ shows and movies on Netflix
• Best LGBTQ+ shows and movies on Apple TV Plus
• Best LGBTQ+ shows and movies on Prime Video
• Best LGBTQ+ movies on Tubi

Harry Styles heads up the cast of My Policeman, which has already been shown in cinemas and is now on streaming service Prime Video. The One Direction singer plays secretly gay police officer Tom Burgess alongside The Crown star Emma Corrin as his wife Marion.

My Policeman directed by Red's Michael Grandage, tells the story of PC Tom Burgess, who struggles to hide his sexuality while living in Brighton on the British south coast in 1957. Based on the 2012 novel My Policeman by Bethan Roberts, the movie explores the criminalization of homosexuality in 1950s Britain.

“The whole point of Tom is that he is a character who is confused. It’s made more problematic by the fact that he’s a policeman, and he’s in a career that is about upholding the law. And the law in the country at the time is about everything he feels—the complexity of it is something that whoever was going to play younger Tom and older Tom needed to somehow understand and absorb,” says Michael Grandage.

So here’s everything we know so far about Prime Video movie My Policeman right now...

My Policeman release date

My Policeman's on Prime Video is available worldwide from Friday, November 4, 2022. The movie has already been shown in select British cinemas from October 21.

My Policeman had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sunday September 11 2022 (see pic below). My Policeman runs for 113 minutes and is rated R.

Is there a My Policeman trailer?

The full trailer for My Policeman was released by Amazon Prime Video on September 7. It starts out showcasing the blossoming romance between Tom and Marion, before showcasing how his forbidden love with Patrick causes havoc in their marriage. It also gives us a brief glimpse at Rupert Everett, Linus Roache and Gina McKee as the older trio.

You can also check out the earlier teaser trailer below, too.

My Policeman plot

In My Policeman, Tom (Harry Styles) meets his future wife Marion (Emma Corrin) on Brighton beach, where they go for a paddle. They end up marrying due to societal expectations. Tom, however, falls for museum curator Patrick Hazelwood (David Dawson) and the pair have a decades-long affair, which turns their lives upside down. 

Set in a time when homosexuality was illegal in Britain, Tom knows it would be safer for him to stay in a relationship with Marion than to be with Patrick. However, when it becomes clear to Marion that Tom really does want to be with Patrick, it sparks a devastating chain of events.

There are two timelines in this movie and Tom, Marion and Patrick are reunited in the 1990s, when the older Tom is played by Linus Roache, while Gina McKee is Marion and Rupert Everett plays a seriously ill Patrick. Society has changed, but the traumas of what happened 40 years previously still hang over them and acts as a stark reminder to Tom of what could have been.

My Policeman cast — Harry Styles on playing Tom Burgess

Singer Harry Styles is playing gay policeman Tom Burgess who leads a secret double life in 1950s Britain. Pink News spoke to a movie insider who revealed that Harry Styles was 'really excited about the challenge' of portraying a gay man in the 1950s — when homosexuality was still illegal in England.

The insider revealed that Harry shoots two sex scenes with co-star David Dawson, and there's also a scene where he's naked on-screen by himself. "Not much is going to be left to the imagination," the insider said. "Harry is throwing himself into this new role and is really excited about the challenge, even though it’s a daunting task."

Harry Styles says: "It was the complexity of Tom that made me want to have a go at playing him. I don’t think he thinks of himself as gay,' says Harry. "To Tom, there’s real love between him and Marion, just as there’s real love between him and Patrick. They’re just different kinds. Patrick is this portal to a whole different world of art, travel, wine and knowledge. He’s not just a person Tom likes, he represents a place in life that Tom aspires to get to. Harry goes on to explain how Tom copes with his homosexuality in a time when it was illegal and taboo. "Just as Tom starts to find some freedom with Patrick, he becomes even more trapped because it’s this incredible thing that he has to lie about. His life as a policeman is one of old-fashioned masculinity, which adds to the shame. It’s crazy to think that just the act of two men walking into an apartment together could be a crime. If Tom, Marion, and Patrick had been able to be completely honest in 1957, they might have had a chance at more happiness. David Dawson and I truly had each other’s backs during filming. It was completely about telling the story, and nothing else, even in the most intimate scenes.

Harry Styles first shot to fame on ITV's hit talent contest The X Factor in 2010, where he became part of the boyband One Direction. The band became one of the best-selling boybands of all time until they went on 'hiatus' in 2016. Harry has gone on to become a successful solo artist but first tried his hand at acting in the movie Dunkirk in 2017, where he played British soldier Alex. He's also starring in the movie Don’t Worry Darling alongside Florence Pugh and Dakota Johnson.

My Policeman cast — Emma Corrin on playing Marion Burgess 

Joining Harry Styles in My Policeman is Emma Corrin who plays Tom’s wife Marion. She eventually discovers Tom’s affair which leads to him being arrested. 

Emma says: "You can look it as a love story but it’s equally an epic tale of friendship. The bonds between Marion, Tom, and Patrick are as fascinating as the romance. Tom is this incredible enigma and that can be very attractive to people. He’s still figuring out his place in the world and Marion loves to nurture, so I think she enjoys how he looks up to her.

"She’s unprepared for a marriage that is far more complicated than what she was led to expect. Tom challenges her assumptions, as well as her prejudices, about what people might want. And she feels incredible pressure.

"I’m not sure she ever intended for it to go where it does. She just wanted Tom to give all of himself to her. Marion loved Patrick as a friend, and they shared so much in common. It was a spur of the moment decision out of anger. She just felt so disappointed and hurt."

Emma was huge news last year after she landed the part of Princess Diana in The Crown Season 4. Before that, however, she was relatively unknown, despite having roles in Pennyworth and Grantchester.

My Policeman cast — David Dawson as Patrick Hazelwood

David Dawson, who plays museum curator Patrick, the forbidden love of Tom’s life, says: "As a gay man, I was really moved. I found myself asking if this could have been my life — if all my hopes, dreams, ambitions, and everything that matters to me could be taken away through no fault but for the fact that I loved another human being. Seeing Patrick trying against the adversity of these times just to be happy I found inspiring.

"Patrick is an incredibly clever man and truly passionate about art. And what I love most is that, despite the era, Patrick is extremely confident in who he is and in his sexuality. He’s skilfully found a way to be himself in the manner that he dresses and the way he presents himself to the public.

"Patrick is head over heels in love with Tom. There is a danger, but what draws him so strongly to Tom is that they’re complete opposites in every way. He loves Tom so much that I think he’s surprised when he only grows so incredibly fond of Marion. Patrick has to deal with the guilt of knowing he’s betraying her."

David Dawson is best known for his role as Toby Kent in Luther but has also appeared in Peaky Blinders, The Hollow Crown, Ripper Street, and The Last Kingdom.  He also played Coronation Street creator Tony Warren in the 2010 one-off drama The Road To Coronation Street.

My Policeman cast — who plays older versions of the characters 

Different actors have been cast to play the older versions of the three main characters as the story moves to the 1990s, with Linus Roache playing the older Tom. Rupert Everett plays an old and quite infirm Patrick while Gina McKee is older Marion. 

My Policeman cast — who else is starring

Kadiff Kirwan, who has recently been seen alongside Sean Bean in the BBC1 drama Time, is part of the My Policeman cast, playing Nigel. Joining him is Dora Davis, Richard Dempsey and Joseph Potter.

My Policeman filming locations 

The My Policeman action has been filmed on location in London, Brighton and Venice with the last scenes shot in the capital city in December 2021 involving Harry, David and Emma. 

My Policeman the novel

The movie is based on the 2012 novel My Policeman by Bethan Roberts which explores the criminalization of homosexuality in the 1950s. The novel looks at the norms around sexuality in Brighton spanning the decades until the 1990s. It is written from the points of view of Marion and Patrick, both thinking about Tom, the man they love so much. The novel was inspired by the life of the author E.M Forster who was in a secret relationship with a married, heterosexual policeman. 

• The best Amazon Prime movies
• Amazon is right: You don't own your digital media
• The best shows on Amazon Prime
• New movies on Amazon Prime
• Amazon's Leonardo starring Aidan Turner
• Amazon's Lords of the Rings TV series
• Amazon's The Wheel Of Time
• Amazon Prime's Lioness
• Amazon's Cinderella
• All or Nothing: Arsenal on Amazon Prime

When folks say "representation matters," it's not meant to be a buzz phrase. The importance of LGBTQ+ stories on screen can't be understated, and their relevance expands past the people they portray on screen. For the community itself, the significance of seeing ourselves on screen can be critical in our acceptance of ourselves and our own identities. But reaching those outside of the community is critical as well. The more we include LGBTQ+ characters in media, the more they begin to be viewed as the social norms.

Since its inception, Apple TV Plus has gone out of its way to bring its viewers some of the most compelling stories available on streaming. So far as LGBTQ+ content goes though, Apple's streaming platform has written itself into the same corner as Disney Plus — there's just not much of it to be found. Even implicitly queer media is rare on the platform, with explicitly gay content even rarer. 

That critique aside, Apple TV Plus does have some exceptional series to choose from. 

Dickinson

"Emily Dickinson was born in 1830 in Amherst, MA. She lived throughout her life in her father's house. Near the end of her life, she rarely left her room. Aside from a few mostly anonymous verses, she remained unpublished. When she died her poems were discovered. Some of the strangest, most fascinating poems ever written. Almost 2000 of them, hidden, in a maid's trunk."

Dickinson stars Hailee Steinfeld as the titular character. She's a poet, a daughter, and a total rebel. Season 1 of the series acts as a kind of coming-of-age story highlighting Emily's determination to become the world's greatest poet. If you need an idea of the characterization before hopping in, this version of Emily Dickinson lives by the motto "if the rules aren't fair, break them." The series explores and portrays Emily's intense relationship with Susan Gilbert, who she was best friends with before Susan married her brother. Emily explores homoerotic themes in her writing and might even end up experimenting with Susan before the first season of the series concludes.

This show is a highly dramatized exaggeration of the real-life of Emily Dickinson and is not historically accurate. Although it's set in the 1830s, it incorporates the use of modern-day music and a ridiculously good list of guest stars. It features excellent cinematography, is incredibly funny, and wildly entertaining.

Severance 

With 14 Emmy nominations and two wins, Severance is one of the most critically-acclaimed series on Apple TV and on this list. Apple describes the synopsis of the series as the following: 

"From director and executive producer Ben Stiller and creator Dan Erickson comes Severance. Mark Scout (Adam Scott) leads a team at Lumon Industries, whose employees have undergone a severance procedure, which surgically divides their memories between their work and personal lives. This daring experiment in ‘work-life balance’ is called into question as Mark finds himself at the center of an unraveling mystery that will force him to confront the true nature of his work… and of himself."

Featured in the series are a couple of characters that are considered to be a part of the LGBTQ+ community. Irving and Burt (John Turturro and Christopher Walken) are two men that explore their love feelings for one another during the course of the show. Their relationship is quite special in that it's one of the few gay pairings on television that reflects men of a particular age. 

Schmigadoon!

Star-studded musical comedy Schmigadoon! will be loved by all musical theatre lovers as it's a glorious parody of the iconic Golden Age of musicals, starring Cecily Strong and Keegan-Michael Key. The six-part toe-tapping romp, which gently sends up the premise of the 1947 Broadway show Brigadoon, follows on/off couple Melissa and Josh who stumble across a magical town that seems to be set in a 1940s musical.
Saturday Night Live stalwart Cecily Strong and Keegan-Michael Key (Fargo, Parks and Recreation) play Melissa and Josh, a couple on a backpacking trip designed to reignite their failing relationship, who arrive in the magical town living in a 1940s musical. It’s all fun, nostalgia and big musical hits, but then there’s a catch — they can’t leave the town until they find "true love".
There will be a second series that parodies yet another musical but as yet Apple TV+ are yet to announce it! 

Mythic Quest

Into workspace comedies? Mythic Quest is exactly the kind of show for you. Think of it as The Guild meets The Office, but with its own unique jokes sprinkled in for good measure. The series follows the team of the (fictional) video game studio, Mythic Quest as they head into the release of a major expansion of their title game. The release of Raven's Banquet leads to all sorts of shenanigans between the team, including a decent amount of (mostly good natured) friction between the game's creator, Ian Grimm (Rob McElhenney) and his engineer and head writer, Poppy Li (Charlotte Nicdao) and C.W. Longbottom (F. Murray Abraham), respectively. 

The series is obviously not focused on queer-coded issues, but it does feature an LGBTQ+ lead character. Mythic Quest: Raven's Banquet's game tester, Rachel (Ashly Burch) is a lesbian. It's not one of those "hinted at" stories, either. Rachel mentions a crush on another woman in the series pilot and is explicitly identified as a lesbian in the third episode, "Dinner Party".

Little Voice

Little Voice has a pretty "simple" premise according to Apple TV Plus' synopsis: The series explores "the universal journey of finding your authentic voice in your early 20s. It is described as a fresh, intensely romantic tale of the search to find your true voice...and then the courage to use it." With vague plot similarities to the film, of the same name, starring Jane Horrocks, Little Voice manages to be a respectable entry into the romantic dramedy genre. 

One of the series' strongest swings is with its character Prisha (Shalini Bathina). Despite her family's traditional values, the character bravely announces that she's gay before the season comes to a close. When she's forced on a date with "respectable Indian boy" Sundeep (Gopal Divan), they both admit that they're interested in other people. For Prisha, that's her bandmate Ananya (Nadia Mohebban). 

Foundation

Isaac Asimov's epic sci-fi saga Foundation has been playing out over many centuries and has introduced us to a gay military leader Bel Riose who has a husband on the planet of Trantor. Played by British actor Ben Daniels, Bel Riose arrived in the third episode of Foundation season 2, when he was a prisoner persuaded by the Empire's robot servant Demerzla to return to Trantor to lead a mission against the Foundation rebels on Terminus. She did this with a clever spot of emotional blackmail, telling Bel Riose this was the only way the loving gay husbands could ever see each other again...

Visible: Out on Television

Visible: Out on Television is a powerful docuseries about the history and representation of LGBTQ+ people on TV, both on-screen and behind the camera, from the beginning of TV to the present day. It touches on the importance of TV as a medium that has shaped American consciousness through the decades, and how the LGBTQ+ movement has influenced what we see on TV today.

The history of how our LGBTQ+ community has been portrayed on-screen (and off) is fascinating. This series starts in the "Dark Ages," when LGBTQ people were portrayed as murderers, sexual deviants, and all-around evil characters in early TV. It wasn't until the 1970s that positive portrayals of LGBTQ+ people began to emerge. It then goes on to talk about how LGBTQ activists began using television as a tool for change, followed by how the HIV/AIDS epidemic was initially ignored by TV, and fear of the disease stunted LGBTQ representation. Eventually, TV was able to raise awareness of the seriousness of the HIV/AIDS health crisis.

It is incredibly moving, informative, and an important docuseries that everyone should see. Directed by Ryan White, it features actors/activists/famous figures like Wanda Sykes, Margaret Cho, Anderson Cooper, Ilana Glazer, Abbi Jacobson, Ellen DeGenerous, Billy Porter, Tim Gunn, Carson Kressley, Andy Cohen, T.R. Knight, and Jesse Tyler Ferguson (to name a few). There are five episodes available to stream now on Apple TV+. Make sure to grab your Kleenex because this series will make you want to cry, scream, laugh, and rejoice at how far we've come, and how far we have yet to go.

Entry written by Nicolette Roux.

Dear...

This show is about how the inspiring story of how a single person can change the world. This series was created by R.J. Cutler, and profiles famous icons and the people whose lives they've inspired by way of a written letter, hence the title. It features appearances by Jane Goodall, Spike Lee, Stevie Wonder, Oprah Winfrey, Misty Copeland, Yara Shahidi, Big Bird, Gloria Steinem, Aly Raisman, and Lin-Manual Miranda, and is bound to inspire and motivate you to overcome adversity and reach for the stars.

Although not LGBTQ+ per se, this series features game-changers that are beacons of hope and symbols of what is possible. "If one person tells their story, that allows other people to tell theirs." You'll watch these heavy hitters talk about their struggles, their triumphs, and how they beat all odds to become some of the most credited, loved, and recognized trailblazers in their given fields.

Entry written by Nicolette Roux.

Little America

Little America takes an in-depth look at the endearing, romantic, heartfelt, inspiring, and unexpected stories of the lives of immigrants in America. The season finale tells the story of a gay Syrian refugee, and how he dreams of being granted asylum in America so he can live openly as a gay man.

Being LGBTQ+ is extremely difficult in Syria. People living in the Syrian Arab Republic may face legal challenges not experienced by non-LGBTQ+ residents. Article 520 of the penal code of 1949 prohibits "carnal relations against the order of nature," and violators can receive up to three years in prison. In territories controlled by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which controls around 7% of Syria, LGBTQ+ people are arrested, beaten, and executed. Little America tells an inspirational story about overcoming oppression and seeking the American dream.

This is an excellent series but, note, only the finale features an LGBTQ+ person. The rest of the series focuses on immigrants and their stories.

Entry written by Nicolette Roux.

Read More:
• Best LGBTQ+ shows and movies to watch on Disney Plus
• Best LGBTQ+ shows and movies to watch free online
• Best LGBTQ+ shows and movies to watch on HBO Max
• Best LGBTQ+ shows and movies to watch on Netflix

The hallmark of a good romantic comedy is a stellar meet-cute, the ability to leverage relationship tropes in its best interests and an obvious obstacle to a happily-ever-after worth that we'll willingly watch the couple overcome. Bros combines all those elements into a charming, rollercoaster of a journey. The film, directed by Nicholas Stoller (Neighbors, Forgetting Sarah Marshall) and co-written by Stoller and lead Billy Eichner is ground-breaking in its all-LGBTQ+ cast and in centering two gay leads without the plot rising out of struggles with their sexuality. But that isn’t what makes this whip-smart rom-com, about two commitment-phobes colliding, so damn entertaining. 

Eichner (Parks and Recreation, Bob's Burgers) stars as forty-something Bobby Lieber, a Manhattanite who makes a living as a podcaster and head curator of what will be the first LGBTQ+ history museum. Liber is snarky, self-deprecating and relationship-phobic. He’s proudly single and on the perpetual hook-up circuit until an encounter with Aaron (Luke McFarlane), a hot probate attorney, while out at a club. 

While not every queer cultural reference will be immediately accessible to a wider audience, Bros isn’t a “niche” comedy either. Stoller and Eichner lean into the rom-com roadmap. Aaron is sexually confident but confines himself to more mainstream lifestyle choices. He’s into CrossFit, country music, and "shmedium" t-shirts. On the surface, he’s part of the “bro” contingent, big on looks but not so much else. Bobby, on the other hand, leads with his snark and sharp edges. He’s prone to saying what he means, he's never met a diva he couldn’t gush about and stays ready to "serve up the bitchy". It’s not a full enemies-to-friends meet-cute, but the massive difference in their energy and the awkward (sexual) tension between the two may cause viewers to have a flashback. What follows is quite possibly one of the best rom-coms based on an original story (here’s your reminder to go watch Fire Island on Hulu/Disney Plus) since 2019’s Long Shot. It's poignant, insightful, self-aware, unapologetically gay and flat-out funny.

Bros relies on the kind of slice-of-life moments that showcase the best, and worst, of both its leads. Bobby and Aaron are emotionally unavailable messes, with a capital M. Watching them navigate their feelings — bad man dancing and all — reveals the soft heart beating behind the witty quips, notable cameos, and pop-culture deep cuts. There’s a natural rhythm to their relationship that carries the plot progression forward without feeling overdone. For every laugh or romp in bed, there’s a moment of vulnerability. A special highlight is how Bros integrates sex and intimacy into the storyline. If you’re (still) laboring under the belief these are the same, Bros is here to disabuse you of that notion — never shying away from showing skin but never being gratuitous or overly explicit. 

Bros presents the story of Bobby and Aaron in a way that showcases both the truth and hypocrisy of the “love is love is love” rhetoric and creates opportunities to mirror some of the best tropes rom-coms offer. Prepare yourself for the tearful crying scene, Grindr culture, come-to-Jesus conversations and those short-sighted decisions certain to spell disaster. Do expect the standard rom-com time-lapse montage of warm and tender moments. The extreme relatableness of its main characters — and the supporting cast — may be the initial draw, but it's the realness of the struggle Bobby and Aaron have with accepting themselves and their feelings, that’ll keep you engaged right through to the end. 

When all is said and done, Bros is utterly charming — even at its most ridiculous. It brings audiences in on the joke while putting them through the emotional ringer. And yes, that’s a good thing.

Bros premieres in US theaters, on September 30. It's released in the UK on October 28, 2022. 

Dealing with a relationship breakup is never easy at the best of times, but it is even harder when your relationship of 17 years comes to an end. This is the situation Uncoupled's New York City real estate agent Michael Lawson (Neil Patrick Harris) finds himself in when he is unceremoniously ditched by his long-term partner, Colin (Tuc Watkins). 

From Darren Star (creator of Sex And The City) and Jeffrey Richman (writer for shows including Modern Family), Uncoupled focuses on the romantic highs and lows of the newly single Michael as he adjusts to single life and the gay dating scene in the city — something that has changed drastically in the two decades he has been off the market. 

Alongside the likable cast of characters and amorous misadventures, the backdrop of the bustling Big Apple provides the perfect setting for this bittersweet sitcom. The good news is that much of the show was filmed on location in New York, so there are plenty of places seen on screen that you can visit in real life. 

Here are just a few of the places seen in Uncoupled…  

Where was Uncoupled filmed?

The High Line

There’s no shortage of recognizable landmarks in New York, and one of the best ways to explore them at a distance is by taking a stroll along the elevated park in Manhattan called The High Line. 

A former, disused section of the New York Central Railroad, The High Line covers 2.33km and runs from the Meatpacking District, through Chelsea, and down to 34th Street on the West Side.

While it can be an excellent spot for sightseeing, its central location means you never know what you might see. In the second episode of Uncoupled, Michael’s best friend and colleague Suzanne (Tisha Campbell) certainly sees something very unexpected strolling along The High Line when she catches Colin with a potential new partner.  

Da Francesco

One of the great things about Uncoupled being set in a real place is that a lot of the restaurants and bars featured are ones that you can go and visit yourself — and for the businesses, it is a great piece of advertising. 

You’re spoilt for choice of places to eat in and around New York, and when Michael seeks comfort from best pals Billy (Emerson Brooks) and Stanley (Brooks Ashmanskas) following the discovery that his ex might be seeing someone else, they head to the trendy Brooklyn based restaurant, Da Francesco. 

With its simple, mirrored decor, this restaurant provides the perfect setting for Michael to bring his friends up to speed with what's happening in his love life while they enjoy comforting Italian food.  

620 Loft & Garden, Rockefeller Center 

The Rockefeller Center is one of the most famous New York locations and sitting atop one of the buildings is the beautiful 620 Loft & Garden. It's a popular private hire space for dinners and weddings, and is an oasis in the heart of the city with manicured gardens, a reflecting pool, and 360° views of landmarks including St Patrick’s Cathedral and towering 30 Rockefeller Plaza.

In episode 2 of Uncoupled, it serves as the setting for a swanky charity dinner that Michael and Suzanne attend, however, drama arises when Michael confronts the man he believes Colin cheated on him with. 

Le Monde

Along with work and play, brunch could be considered a core activity for most Manhattanites, and that is absolutely the case for the characters in Uncoupled. One of the things the series looks at is the impact of Michael and Colin’s break-up — not just on them but on their wider circle of friends and family as well. 

While Michael gladly confides in his closest friends, he is a little more reluctant to talk to his parents, and his mother Lisa (Stephanie Faracy) doesn’t seem to be keen on letting Colin go.

At the beginning of episode 4, we see Michael and Lisa stepping out of the French brasserie, Le Monde, located on the Upper West Side. With its brightly colored exterior and al fresco dining, this cafe has distinct European qualities and looks like a great spot for people watching. Lisa remarks that the niçoise salad is overrated, but you’ll just have to try it to see for yourself. 

Claire's Apartment

While much of Uncoupled focuses on Michael’s personal life, we do also get to see some of his professional life working as a high-end real estate agent. This means we get a glimpse into some truly enviable and incredibly expensive properties in New York, and many of them were shot on location as well.

One of Michael’s most demanding clients is a recent divorcée, Claire (Marcia Gay Harden), who is determined to move out of her ex-husband’s luxurious penthouse into a new home. This isn’t a location you can easily walk into, but this stunning double-height apartment in Manhattan’s Midtown East is available to buy with a big enough budget.  

Atto Prime

Michael’s adventures in the modern dating scene frequently result in awkward encounters but occasionally there is a glimmer of hope. At a roller disco event hosted by Billy in episode 6, Michael bumps — quite literally — into the handsome Luke (Dan Amboyer), and they form a quick connection. 

After Colin left him, Michael struggled with the idea of dating someone else long-term, and Luke is the only one he considers could be more than a one-night hook-up. As they get to know each other, they head to some romantic date spots in the city, including Atto Prime in Midtown East — where they even take the bold step of sharing each other's food. 

With classy decor and tantalizing steakhouse-style menu, Atto Prime looks like a great place to eat — whether you choose to share or not. 

Horror movies have always served as a vehicle for emotional exploration, political commentary, as well as analyzing our relationship with mortality and the unknown. Of all the subgenres of film, horror is the only one to continually see success both financially and with audiences since the beginning of cinema as we know it. All artistic expression builds upon what came before and every work of art is derivative of something. If we go back to the very foundations of the horror genre, we’ll find a constant theme running through the most inspirational works and essential creators--queerness. 

Humans have always been storytellers, and cultures around the world have been telling horror stories for entertainment purposes or as cautionary tales as long as humans have been able to communicate. Once we started writing things down, publishing novels, and creating storytelling structures, we began to establish the building blocks of every form of entertainment as we know it. For horror movies, Gothic novels set the stage, and the writers behind these stories were overwhelmingly queer. 

Horatio Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto from 1764 is largely accepted as the foundational example of gothic writing, and it’s a story dripping with homoeroticism. Other gothic authors like Matthew Lewis, William Thomas Beckford, and Francis Lathom were all homosexual, and their lives greatly impacted the lens through which they wrote their work. Of course, words like “homosexual” or “gay” are nowhere to be found in their works, because the words hadn’t yet even been invented. But according to James Jenkins of Valancourt Books, “they sublimated them and expressed them in more acceptable forms, using the medium of a transgressive genre like horror fiction.”

In 1818, Mary Shelley invented the science-fiction genre with her novel, Frankenstein. At just 20-years-old, Shelley published one of the most influential works of fiction ever written, and effortlessly critiqued the horrific capabilities within humanity. Shelley also notoriously lost her virginity next to her mother’s grave and kept her husband’s calcified heart with her after his death. Shelley is the coolest goth chick to ever walk the earth, and she was also likely bisexual. In letters she wrote following her husband’s death, she noted being afraid of me, “tousy-mousy” for women, and wanting to “give herself away.” With this information, it’s difficult not to view the tortured creation with the inability to truly love, Frankenstein’s monster, as a vehicle for her own repressed feelings. The creation is wholly sympathetic despite being viewed as a monster, a common theme that would continue throughout queer horror storytelling.

Back in 1872, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu published one of the earliest vampire novels on record--Carmilla. While the novel was not the first time a vampire tale was told, it holds two very large distinctions. First, It was an overtly queer story. Carmilla is a lesbian and waxes poetically about women. It wasn’t coded, it wasn’t subtextual--it was very, VERY gay. Carmilla predates Bram Stoker’s Dracula by 26 years and was a massive inspiration for the novel. Like Sheridan’s story, both stories are told in the first person, the descriptions of the title character in Carmilla and of Lucy in Dracula are eerily similar, even going as far as both of them struggling with sleepwaking. Stoker's Dr. Abraham Van Helsing is a complete echo of Le Fanu's vampire expert Baron Vordenburg, solidifying the archetype for vampire stories forever. 

While it is true that Bram Stoker died having a wife, historians have noted that he was a fiercely private man and had a notably sexless marriage. He was a dear friend of Oscar Wilde and watching him endure the sodomy trials was traumatic, and many believe the “othering” fear of Count Dracula was largely inspired by the way his friend was treated as a monster. He also wrote love letters to Walt Whitman and I’m sorry, there is no way anyone with such a strong grasp on male dom/male sub relationships (in the form of Dracula and R.M. Renfield) is straight.

When these stories made the jump from the page to the screen, it was again queer people who took the reigns. German expressionist director F.W. Murnau made Nosferatu inspired by Stoker’s novel, and was notoriously gay. He moved from Germany to Hollywood later in life solely for the purpose of being able to live openly. The director of Universal’s Frankenstein, James Whale, lived as an openly gay man throughout his career, and delivered us the writing of Bride of Frankenstein’s Dr. Septimus Pretorius, a deliciously fabulous gay character played by the famously queer Ernest Thesiger. Dr. Frankenstein himself, Colin Clive, was rumored to be bisexual and his marriage to Jeanne de Casalis nothing more than a cover for both of their queerness. There are those that deny these claims, but we also know that historians are notorious for straight-washing anyone who lived outside of rigid cisgender heternormative roles. 

Director Tod Browning has been described as an “alleged heterosexual,” and both of his films Dracula and Freaks are dripping with homosexual subtext. The first sequel to everyone’s favorite cloak-donning daddy was Dracula’s Daughter, the oft-forgotten Universal monster movie about a woman who seeks the assistance of a psychologist to cure her of her “unnatural” urges and tendencies of seducing female victims, stripping them down, admiring their bodies, and then draining them of their life force. Of course, in 1936 this sort of urge would constitute a psychological evaluation, but to millennial ol’ me, it just sounds like a great night. 

These early horror films are the center of the continually growing spider web of the genre, with every horror film easily traced back to the films of the 1920s and 1930s like a game of six degrees of Kevin Bacon but gayer.

What makes it so difficult to discuss the queer roots of horror cinema is that because of archaic standards like The Hay’s Code criminalizing explicitly queer representation and forcing it into subtextual coding, an overwhelming number of straight people are frustratingly incapable of seeing the truth. Queer people became really, really good at hiding queer stories in subversive films like the horror genre, which makes sense considering how many real life queer people had to become good at hiding their own identities. On the contrary, those that refuse to see a queer story unless it features a giant rotating voice-over screaming “THIS IS GAY” just prove that if someone has grown up always seeing themself and their stories represented on screen, they’ve never had to develop the ability to headcanon identifiable visibility. 

When It: Chapter 2 came out in 2019, I noted that I found it funny that fans were discrediting Richie Tozier’s gay subtext while costumed wearing the same shirt as Jesse in Nightmare on Elm Street 2. Despite this blatantly visible queer coding, angry fans sent me death threats for trying to “push the gay agenda onto horror.” This is an unfortunately frequent occurrence as any queer film writer will tell you there is often a visceral response by some people for simply identifying queerness in horror. Their anger is clearly rooted in the fear of enjoying something that could be perceived as gay—an immeasurably ironic reality and further proof as to why we call it homophobia. 

Sorry, not sorry, but if you love horror movies, you love a genre that has deep roots in queerness. The queer influence will continue to permeate throughout the genre, from every phallic faced alien, penetrative weapon wielding slasher, haunting presence of repressed trauma, and draglike one-liner delivering villains. 

It’s impossible to push a gay agenda in a horror film, because horror films have always been queer.

Read More:
• Best LGBTQ+ shows and movies on Netflix
• Best LGBTQ+ shows and movies to watch free online
• Best LGBTQ+ shows and movies to watch on Disney+
• Best LGBTQ+ shows and movies to watch on HBO Max
• Best LGBTQ+ shows and movies to watch on Apple TV+

Things have changed a lot when it comes to LGBTQ+ representation over the last few decades, but it’s taken a lot of work behind the scenes from people pushing to make it better. From the moral panic films of yesteryear to the pioneering works of the New Queer Cinema all the way up to the present day, it’s been a long and winding road to get better representation on our screens. As we continue to push for better diversity in portrayals of LGBTQ+ people, it’s always timely to take a moment to think about how truly far we have come by celebrating a few of our favorites.

Bit (2019)

Nicole Maines has been doing incredible work on Supergirl as the superhero Dreamer, but fans of Maines’ work should not miss her in Bit. Our protagonist Laurel arrives in LA ready to make a new start after years of upheaval only to run into a small group of queer feminist vampires. Taking the delightful subgenre of the “lesbian vampire” and giving it new life by injecting humor and parody into the mix, Bit is a romp through genre tropes that is never afraid to let its hair down and party.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2020)

The story begins with an art teacher named Marianne, surprised when one of her students pulls out her Portrait of a Lady on Fire. Her students ask for an explanation as to who the painting is of and why it was kept hidden in a back room. We are sent to the past, in which Marianne first met the object of the painting, a young woman named Heloise who was pulled out of her convent to be wed to a man she’s never met. Marianne is commissioned to paint Heloise so that her future husband will know what she looks like before he agrees to marry her. As Marianne and Heloise fall in love, their doomed affair takes on epic proportions, ultimately becoming a commentary on the nature of storytelling and why the erasure of women’s history matters. From beginning to end, Portrait of a Lady on Fire is an absolute masterpiece.

Moonlight (2016)

Among the most critically-acclaimed LGBTQ+ movies of all time, Moonlight takes us through the painful homophobia that shaped our protagonist Chiron’s early years. Nicknamed “Little” and bullied by an abusive mother as well as kids at school, Chiron’s life is a struggle that he only survives by becoming hard as nails. Years later, he has a chance to make things work with his crush from his early years, but learning to let down his defenses again with someone who truly hurt him after years of hardship becomes his biggest challenge yet.

The Handmaiden (2016)

Sarah Waters has long been known for creating queer, nonlinear historical fiction novels. Her book Fingersmith was adapted to film in 2005, but it gained a new life as The Handmaiden in 2016. Making some changes to tighten up the plot, switching the locale to Japan-occupied Korea, and infusing more explicit sexuality into the mix, The Handmaiden manages to improve on what was already a pretty great movie. When a young worker becomes tied up in a plot to institutionalize a rich man’s niece and steal her money, she has only to follow the plan that has been laid out for her by the wicked Count Fujiwara. Yet, after meeting the enigmatic Hideko and falling under her spell, everything changes, and the two find themselves struggling to free themselves of an oppressive system in which powerful men subjugate and use women to further their own plans.

Tangerine (2015)

Freshly out of a brief stint in jail, Sin-Dee Rella is infuriated when her friend Alexandra informs her that her boyfriend Chester has been cheating on her while she was away. Sin-Dee vows revenge, but that’s not exactly what this movie is about. Focusing on the lives of Black trans sex workers, Tangerine gave us a painful, beautiful, tragically hopeful and unbelievably real take on day-to-day life for the women that our society tries its hardest to forget about. Captivating performances and compelling character arcs are just the icing on the cake for this incredible film.

All About My Mother (1999)

After Manuela’s teen son dies tragically young, she travels to find his other parent, a trans woman named Lola who she never told about their child. Reuniting with her old friend Agrado, Manuela meets a dynamic new cast of characters while trying to process her profound grief. Pedro Almodovar is known for creating subversive art films with hearts of gold, and that’s exactly what makes All About My Mother work as well as it does. These characters struggle and they aren’t perfect, but there is a sincerity of experience that carries us through.

Pariah (2011)

Teenage Alike slowly comes into her own as a butch lesbian while dealing with aggressive homophobia at home. Her parents care about her but they struggle to accept her. Yet, even as Alike must learn to draw boundaries and distance herself from the people who have hurt her, Pariah is much more about her story of growth. Watching Alike learn to experience the new euphoria that comes with her newfound expressions of queerness is nothing short of revelatory. Incredible cinematography, insightful dialogue, and devastating performances from its cast make Pariah a film that is impossible to forget.

The Watermelon Woman (1996)

Cheryl Dunye is easily one of the most important filmmakers in LGBTQ+ cinematic history and her feature The Watermelon Woman is rightfully considered a classic. Becoming obsessed with an actor who played stereotypical “maid” roles referred to in credits only as The Watermelon Woman, Cheryl dives into the vaults in hopes of finding out more and ends up learning a lot about herself along the way. Commenting on racism as well as homophobia in the mid-’90s while never forgetting to celebrate the individual joys of Black queerness, The Watermelon Woman manages to be equal parts endearing, complicated, and hilarious all while operating on a shoestring budget.

The Boys in the Band (2020)

An adaptation of the groundbreaking 1968 play and the subsequent 1970 film, The Boys in the Band was brought to a new generation with the 2020 remake. Our protagonist Michael is attending his friend Donald’s birthday party, but Michael invites a friend from college who doesn’t know he’s gay. This leads to a night of revelations that tell us everything about where the characters are at and what they’re all going through as gay men in the late ‘60s. Part of what makes The Boys in the Band such an incredible film is the way it shows an ensemble of actors having unique and individual stories while focusing on a single night in which they just so happen to be gathered together in celebration. The 2020 remake was able to include an openly-gay cast, which adds an extra authenticity.

Black Lightning

Easily one of the most underrated superhero shows, Black Lightning combines great acting, solid scripts, a soundtrack to die for, and an element of the fantastic to create one of the CW network's very best. All the characters on this show are a lot of fun, but there’s no overselling eldest Pierce child Anissa and her partner Grace, whose romance mostly took a backseat to the more pressing world of superheroics for the first couple seasons. As Grace’s complicated and traumatic backstory was revealed, the trials were too much and the two broke up, but ultimately reunited. Grace and Anissa are a complicated couple who have experienced a lot of ups and downs, but by resisting giving them a pat love story, Black Lightning has given us one of the more compelling combined character arcs in television.

Legends of Tomorrow

While a lot of shows struggle to portray a single queer character or relationship, Legends of Tomorrow has spent six seasons delivering a handful of TV’s very best. From the hopelessly romantic Avalance (Ava Sharpe and Sara Lance) to the doomed connection between John Constantine and Desmond and the epic love of Leo and Ray, this is a series that truly shows up for the gays. A constantly rotating cast, bizarre cosmic threats, and a willingness to embrace the weirdness of superheroes infuse Legends of Tomorrow with a sense of humor and fun, but its characters are what makes it truly great.

Wynonna Earp

If Buffy the Vampire Slayer's powers waited until she was in her late twenties to kick in after she’d made a whole lot of catastrophic life choices, she’d be Wynonna Earp. A descendant of Wyatt Earp granted with a magical demon-killing gun called Peacemaker, Wynonna and her sister Waverly team up to protect the world from various demonic threats. There’s a lot going on with this series and it is a true delight from beginning to end, but there’s no denying that a major part of its appeal is the love story between Waverly and Nicole Haught. When we meet Waverly, she’s in a dead-end relationship with a guy that doesn’t treat her right, but by the end of the series she’s married the love of her love and gained a profound sense of confidence and inner peace, making hers one of the most genuinely positive coming out stories in genre.

Lingua Franca (2019)

Following an undocumented Filipino trans woman named Olivia as she evades dangerous anti-immigration law enforcement and cares for an elderly woman named Olga, Lingua Franca covers so many complicated identity issues so effortlessly that it’s nothing short of stunning. Equal parts beautiful and devastating, covering issues of transphobia as well as harmful anti-immigration laws, Lingua Franca centers on incredible performances and seemingly minor interactions that tell us everything about how difficult it is for Olivia simply to get by day-to-day.

Schitt's Creek

Based in sitcom genre tropes established decades back with shows like Green Acres, Schitt’s Creek might have been a flash-in-the-pan if it weren’t for the incredible comedic timing of longtime comedy partners Catherine O’Hara and Eugene Levy, raw talent from relative newcomers Dan Levy and Annie Murphy, and the truly stunning level of heart that went into the series. Beginning as a somewhat lightweight comedy in which a rich family is thrown into poverty, it ended as one of the most sincere sitcoms of all time. Managing to be one of the funniest shows to air in recent years while including a beautiful love story between main characters Patrick and David is just one reason why Schitt’s Creek will go down in TV history.

This post contains spoilers for Shrill.

Unless you are also a fat person, it’s exceedingly difficult to explain why Shrill is one of the most important series in a very long time. Based on Lindy West’s memoir of the same name, Shrill centers on a young journalist named Annie (Aidy Bryant) dealing with a lackluster love life, complicated friendships, a frustrating work environment, all through the lens of existing in the world as a fat person and the unique difficulties that brings along with it. In its third and final season, the show finally gives the audience more insight on Annie’s roommate Fran (Lolly Adefope), and her whirlwind and sometimes messy love life. Fran is Black, fat, queer, and all of the relationships in her life are greatly molded by these intersections. It’s hard enough to get Black, fat, or queer representation on their own, but to have all three in one character is monumental. 

In the earlier seasons, we see Fran as somewhat of an inverse to Annie. The two have been best friends since college, but are in two very different places in their life in regard to their relationships. Annie is still coming to terms with her body sexually, still learning to have a better command of her needs, and still struggling to see her value reflected in the people willing to take her home to bed. On the other hand, Fran is unapologetically queer, extremely comfortable in her fat body, and absolutely relishes her fabulous sex life with equally as partners.

In the first season, Fran and Annie attend a Body Posi pool party, where people of all body types are able to have fun together in a judgement free environment. This is where Fran meets Vic (Melanie Field), a fellow fattie rocking a two piece bathing suit and a jaguar print shawl. “Who is that girl? She is so hot. I have to know her.” Fran is immediately into her, and we as the audience immediately root for Fran to pursue her. Their sexual chemistry is electric, and Fran’s confidence approaching her is unseen outside of fat characters like Melissa McCarthy in Bridesmaids or Fat Amy in Pitch Perfect where the comedy is centered around how unlikely it would be for a fat woman to own their sexuality. Fran’s assertive pursuit of Vic isn’t a punchline, it’s an identical presentation offered to a thin character pursuing a man at a club. Annie spends the pool party adjusting her comfort while surrounded by a hundred other fat bodies, whereas Fran is right at home.

When Fran and Vic finally make moves on one another, it’s effortless. There’s no jokey or awkward navigation of each other’s bodies the way we frequently see in romantic comedies featuring (typically male) a fat person. It’s seamless the way they melt into one another with couch cuddling and kissing--Vic’s midriff constantly visible and Fran’s thighs proudly on display. Vic and Fran’s relationship doesn’t work out, another aspect of queer sexuality we never get to see. The “we’re just like you” assimilation movement birthed out of the quest for marriage equality has scared a lot of entertainment industries away from actually admitting that just like straight people, gay people also go through messy relationships and emotionally devastating breakups. Fran’s breakup with Vic is devastating, but Fran’s response is to instead love and date herself. 

Okay, yes, it sounds immediately cringe to have a fat woman go on some personal eat, pray, love journey, but this journey of self-love for Fran has nothing to do with her queerness or her fatness. She doesn’t have to learn how to be okay with her sexuality, nor does she have to learn how to be okay with her fatness. She is more than just these two aspects of her life, and the only problems she has to navigate surrounding them are having to deal with the other people in her life (namely, her British-Nigerian family) who aren’t far enough on their acceptance journey as Fran would like. 

But even her season of self-love isn’t without sex. As Fran tells us, “I’m masturbating tastefully and sparingly.” Women seldom get to talk about their masturbation habits outside of comedy films, but Shrill allows Fran the autonomy to be as proud of her bedroom habits as her post-breakup emotional release singing “Shallow” at a karaoke bar after getting high and devouring a burrito. The season ends with Fran meeting Em (E.R. Fightmaster), who has arrived to crash “FranFest,” a party thrown to celebrate Fran’s life as a single lady, and immediately tells her how into her they are. Em gives the hot queer version of the TikTok “fuccboi face,” and the two have a steamy makeout session on the side of a house. 

Season 3 starts with Fran and Em together, but it also includes a flashback episode featuring a closeted Fran coming to terms with what she’s always known about herself deep down. The discovery is presented in an incredibly romantic and still very hot makeout session with her friend Dia, played by the openly queer Jessica Henderson. Dia and Fran are both Black, they’re both fat, and they’re both queer. Together—lit by the glowing blues of pop and candy machines—a friendly embrace held a little too long leads to the inevitable. Fran and Dia lean in, their bodies making contact before their mouths meet, and it is both beautiful and totally hot. They kiss, a lot, an eroticism personified in Ritz cracker sandwiches crushed still in its packaging. 

It’s important to note that Fran and Em are completely different body types, as Em is tall and slender, but there’s never any awkwardness about the two navigating one another. As Fran and Em navigate their serious and committed relationship (complete with meeting each other’s families), they also don’t shy away from talking about and showing their sex lives. The duo decide that they have such hot sex, they need to document it by making a private sex-tape. The results are hilariously bad.

Our favorite duo sit back to revel in their tantalizing creation, only to laugh in horror as they realize that from an outside perspective, their sex (like all non-pornographically choreographed sex) looks ridiculous. They poke fun at the awkward noises they make, or the cringe-worthy words of affirmation that slip out in the heat of the moment, but are ultimately still completely obsessed with each other. They have sex for each other—no one else—and even seeing how ridiculous sex can appear outside of the throes of passion, they’re still so turned on by each other.

As a fat person with a tall, slender, and gender nonconforming partner, I had long accepted that the only time I’d ever see representation of a relationship dynamic like mine was going to be in fetish pornography, but Shrill changed all of that. Fran and Em’s sex life isn’t just normalizing sex that looks like the kind I enjoy, it’s also de-stigmatizing it from the decades of social conditioning that has taught us fat bodies are “gross” and impossible to find attractive. Fran is Black, fat, queer, and undeniably sexy, and Shrill won’t ever let us forget it.

This post contains mild spoilers for The Mitchells vs. the Machines.

Despite the progress made in animated television series like Craig of the Creek, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, Adventure Time, Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts, The Owl House, and most notably, Steven Universe, animated films have been moving at a snail’s pace in regard to LGBTQ+ representation. Disney’s Onward released just last year was the first time the House of Mouse explicitly featured a LGBTQ+ character with most representation relegated to queer coded villains (I still love you, Ursula). Fans rejoiced when Laika’s ParaNorman in 2012 revealed the ultra-jock “Mitch” as gay in his final moment on screen, making him the first openly gay character in a mainstream animated film. Yes, you are doing the math correctly. The first time a mainstream animated film acknowledged an openly gay character was less than a decade ago.

Now, armed with an intentionally placed rainbow button, a laptop filled with absurdist comedy short films, a brain cluttered with anxiety, a desire to find “her people,” and a continued message that sometimes it takes time to figure out who you are, Katie Mitchell of The Mitchells vs. the Machines has arrived to rightfully claim the throne of queer representation in animated cinema.

Following the cold open, we’re introduced to Katie jamming out in her cluttercore bedroom adorned with mock B-movie posters and a rainbow comforter while “I Want More” by the riot grrrl band, bangs. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t look awfully familiar to this queer cinephile’s teenage bedroom and soundtrack. When Katie finally speaks to us, a candy-coated rainbow outlines her frozen image, highlighting her pen-drawn faux tattoos, permanent marker applied black nail polish, and her voiceover stating, “I’ve always felt a little different than everyone else.”

Sure, everyone feels like an alien imposter inhabiting a fleshy meat sack when they’re about to go off to college but that line paired with what we’ve already learned about Katie based on her bedroom sanctuary feels like a bat signal screaming “baby queer.” Of course there are plenty of non-queer kids that make weird movies and have excellent taste in film, but when you’ve spent a lifetime having to headcanon your own representation, these little hints are usually all we ever get.

Voiced by the openly queer Abbi Jacobson (Broad City) The Mitchells vs. the Machine's Katie is a filmmaker, and she’s one of those kids who has been making home movies for her entire life. A stack of her greatest hits include titles like Dial “B” for Burger, her iconic series of Dog Cop and in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment, Y tu Papá También. The Dial “M” for Murder reference is probably easy for people to catch, but for those that are unaware, the real film Y Tu Mamá También by Alfonso Cuarón is one of the most well known pieces of queer cinema. For Katie to not only know the title, but to know it well enough to create a parody of it is such a beautiful nod to her identity.

"My parents haven't figured me out yet," Katie says following her showcase of her filmmaking creativity. "To be fair, it took me a while to figure myself out." Despite the “born this way” narrative pushed by politicians, pundits, well-meaning activists, and Lady Gaga, any most queer people will tell you that coming to terms with your identity is a journey. It doesn’t come easily for everyone, and sometimes it takes a while to accept the truth about who you are. Sure, we could read this line as just another misunderstood teen talking about how parents just don’t understand, but for queer kids (and queer adults for that matter) it’s a line that strikes one hell of a chord.

Later on in The Mitchells vs. the Machines, in the midst of the robot apocalypse, Katie teases her little brother Aaron over a possible crush on the next door neighbor. In typical little boy fashion, he rejects the suggestion complete with end-of-the-world dramatics only for Katie to reply, “Don’t hide your feelings, man. That’s no way to live.” Throughout the film, Katie mentions on numerous occasions that only her little brother seems to understand her. There’s an unspoken agreement between the two after Katie delivers this line. Aaron knows exactly what she means by this, likely because he remembers how hard it was for her when she was figuring it out.

Fortunately, all of the signs pay off toward the end of The Mitchells vs. the Machines after the Mitchells have successfully saved the world from being overtaken by robot overlords and is happily enjoying her first semester of film school. Her mom (Maya Rudolph) blurts out, “Are you and Jade official?" "And will you bring her home for Thanksgiving?” Boom. Affirming validation of Katie’s queer identity.

The moments referenced for the purpose of this article take up less than two minutes of the film’s runtime, and yet they are so, so important. Katie is explicitly queer, yes, but that’s not all she is. She’s funny, creative, messy, dramatic, brave, and a total weirdo that any kid, regardless of identity, can relate to. When we talk about wanting complex characters that don’t feel like stereotypes, we’re looking for characters like The Mitchells vs. the Machines' Katie Mitchell. She’s going to be a life-changing character in the lives of so many kids, and I can loudly admit that she’s exactly the type of representation I needed when I was figuring myself out too.

The true heart of The Mitchells vs. the Machines is the conflicted relationship between Katie and her dad Rick. The two are constantly butting heads and struggling to truly understand each other, but their inability to see eye-to-eye has nothing to do with Katie being queer. All too often, queer representation is relegated to a source of trauma or conflict, but that isn’t so with this one. Katie and Rick have strife because they’re a teenager and a dad. Their issues are based in generational gaps and differing interests, not in Katie’s identity. It’s so refreshing to see a queer character allowed to have turmoil in their life that has nothing to do with someone having an issue with how they happen to love.

Animated movies are hesitant to show LGBTQ+ representation because our culture is still not only struggling with how to explain queerness to children, but also flat out accepting that it’s even a possibility. Despite Disney’s one and only canonically queer character in a mainstream animated film, they are constantly under fire and boycotted for promoting a “gay agenda.” There is a very, very vocal minority of people that will scream at the top of their lungs that their children are being “indoctrinated” by even coding queerness in films, and that’s a scary thing for a lot of studios. James Gunn revealed last year that his original script for the live-action Scooby Doo featured long-time queer coded icon, Velma Dinkley, as explicitly gay, but the studio continued to water down her queerness until finally throwing in a boyfriend character just to make sure there wouldn’t be any questioning of her orientation.

It sounds ridiculous to say it, but Mike Rianda and Jeff Rowe genuinely took a risk by making Katie Mitchell queer. Many of the parental guide websites have been flagging the references to Katie’s queerness as “sexual content,” further proving that we have so, so far still to go with understanding LGBTQ+ youth. The Mitchells vs. the Machines is a genuinely wonderful film, and the importance of it featuring a queer protagonist cannot be overstated.

In the words of Katie Mitchell, “don’t let the world make you normal.”

This post contains spoilers for Supergirl

The portrayal of transgender folks in film and television is a veritable minefield of shock-mongering, well-intentioned problematics, and straight-up bigotry. It’s easy to see why many transgender folks opt to relate to the art they consume on an allegorical and symbolic level rather than a literal representational one. After all, the biggest pop cultural portrayals of transgender femininity in the 1990s were in Ace Ventura and The Silence of the Lambs, films that are not exactly noted for their kind and nuanced takes on transgender experience. So why wouldn’t a trans person opt instead to embrace the themes of The Matrix or Ghost in the Shell? At least when an allegory, intentional or otherwise, is imperfect, you can fall back on the indirectness of the storytelling, the literal interpretation allowing you to uphold the themes that resonate most strongly. Thankfully, at least in terms of tone and intention, our cultural benchmark for direct transgender empathy has been raised out of hostility and into cisgender curiosity, which is at least a step in the right direction.

The tide turned in the 2010s toward an examination of transgender people as a novelty of prestige art, much in the same way that romantic drama between two straight same-sex actors became shorthand for Oscar bait in the aftermath of Brokeback Mountain. The Academy awarded cisgender actors Jared Leto and Eddie Redmayne for films that, at least superficially, are empathetic to transgender experience, but the performances themselves border on caricature as the characters inhabited by cisgender actors are almost solely defined by their transgender identity and have no dimension beyond their role as tragic martyr to society’s prejudices.

Television fared better in the 2010s, with Laverne Cox’s groundbreaking role in Orange Is The New Black marking a high-profile shift in transgender actors portraying transgender characters in roles of greater prominence than victims in crime shows. However, there’s still a sense of novelty to this exciting development, a progressive marketing push that turns transgender presence and implicit endorsement into a benchmark of liberal bone fides. Sophia Burset is a huge step forward for trans representation, but Orange Is The New Black constantly references and reminds the audience of Cox’s status as a trans woman in a predominantly cisgender environment. It’s an accepted presence, though not without its share of realistic bigotry, but Sophia starts to become less of a persistent character as the series progresses and the writing gradually loses interest in her as a hook to bring back its audience every season.

The most explicit instance of transgender representation being crafted by transgender creatives is Transparent, a fascinating exercise in watching allyship develop in real time over years of television as showrunner Joey Soloway embraced one of their parents coming out as transgender and realized over the course of the show that they themselves are non-binary. The casting of cisgender actor Jeffrey Tambor as the character inspired by Soloway’s trans mother is a bad foot forward that the show never fully recovered from, feeding into the misguided perception that trans identity is inherently performative and should be replicated by cisgender actors assigned the same gender at birth as the character. Yet actresses like Alexandra Billings and Trace Lysette brought their experiences to roles that were unlike anything that preceded them on television, actively critiquing cisgender relationships to trans identity with writers like Our Lady J and Ali Liebegott providing the words and scenarios to portray that to a wide audience.

However, even this holds an air of cisgender tourism, as the majority of the main cast was cisgender and the entire premise of the show is based on the novelty of watching a family come to terms with its apparent patriarch’s embrace of transgender identity. The show itself is important as an imperfectly entertaining educational tool for cisgender viewers and is step forward in the careers of many of the transgender folks involved, but it’s also limiting transgender identity to a singular discussion of transness, driven by a showrunner whose understanding of their own non-binary identity was explored through the creation of the show itself. There’s value in that, but it still places the show in the realm of performative intellectualism that defined much of the so-called Golden Age of Television.

The next step is to embrace transgender folks as an integrated part of our society, casting them in stories where being trans is an important part of their identity, but it isn’t theirs or the show’s entire reason to exist. We saw this pioneered in conjunction with Orange Is The New Black in another early Netflix show, Lana and Lilly Wachowshi’s Sense8, where Jayme Clayton played a hacker and activist in a show about the psychic connection between strangers around the world, though the show's high-concept premise and execution only ever garnered cult appeal. We’ve also recently seen such integration on Star Trek: Discovery, with Blu del Barrio and Ian Alexander playing roles that casually reference their existence as non-binary and trans people, respectively – sometimes clumsily, though with laudable effort – but without storylines that literally explore those identities for the benefit of a cisgender audience.

The biggest leap forward, though, feels born from Supergirl’s Nia Nal, which strikes a balance between explicit representation and sheer entertainment value that marks a turning point as important as Laverne Cox’s ascendency, if in a less explicit way. Nicole Maines joined the show as Nia, AKA the superhero Dreamer, in Supergirl’s fourth season, so the show already had an established tone and fanbase, based in part on its poptimist feminism but predominantly for its place in The CW’s extremely popular slate of Arrowverse series based on DC Comics characters. Nia is written to be a recurring and integral member of the show’s main cast, and while Nia is a transgender character and will openly discuss being so with other characters, she is not written to be the show’s token trans character.

Nia is a bit of a dork, with a passion for journalism and justice that puts her in a sort of little-sister relationship to the Girl of Steel. Her superpowers are based on an alien ancestry that is passed matrilineally to women of the species, giving her the ability to see the future. She develops a romantically troubled relationship with Brainy that becomes the crux of a storyline about suspected betrayal and hidden emotions. These are characteristics and plotlines that give Nia dimension independent of being trans, allowing her to exist as a character without having to make constant reference to a known and understood fact of her identity.

But the show is also not shy about exploring Nia’s character in episodes and plotlines that specifically highlight her transness. Within a couple episodes of joining the show, Nia comes out to her boss James Olsen in a bid for the CatCo newspaper to prioritize support for threatened minorities over the appearance of “balanced” reporting. One episode explores Nia’s relationship with her family upon the realization that the inheritance of her mother’s precognitive powers marks her as the female successor of her bloodline, even as her sister struggles to accept that reality because Nia is trans. Another episode finds Dreamer coming to explicit terms with violence against the trans community and with her role as protector, not as an angel of vengeance.

These examples are explicit, blunt, and not totally immune from criticism of their exploration of trans issues, but they are in keeping with the show’s overall portrayal of feminist issues with light allegory and unfiltered melodramatics. Supergirl itself is built on a foundation of feminism that works in conjunction with its superhero antics, which is part of why it’s so important that Nia Nal became the first transgender superhero on television through this show. Nia is neither tokenized for her existence as a trans woman in this cast, nor is she assimilated without acknowledgment of what Nicole Maines can specifically bring to the role. She is successfully integrated into a popular superhero show, the height of pop-cultural significance in the current zeitgeist, and her presence paves the way so that other transgender performers can have similarly integrated, widely seen roles.

All this isn’t to say that there isn’t still a place for prestige dramas to explore transgender experience or for transgender creators to make works exploring their own experiences. Orange Is The New Black, Transparent, and the works of the Wachowski sisters all deserve their places in trans art history for what they bring to the table. However, Nia Nal matters so much as a character because she’s showing her humanity in a medium that casts a wide net and captures more than a niche audience because of it. As attacks on the autonomy and safety of transgender people continue to rise, that empathetic inclusion in our broadest forms of entertainment gives hope that the tide can turn against hate.

• The best Amazon Prime movies
• Amazon is right: You don't own your digital media
• The best shows on Amazon Prime
• New movies on Amazon Prime

This article contains spoilers for season 3 of Star Trek: Discovery.

It was not that long ago that, if you were a queer or trans person, there wasn’t a whole lot of reflection of yourself in popular culture, at least not in any positive or affirming sense. The refuge that many writers and viewers adopt — trying to relate a marginalized experience — is by using allegory. Star Trek has always been a bastion of smuggling progressive ideals (for their time) into high-concept science fiction adventures. However, just because something can be read to have symbolic meaning, doesn't mean that it functionally serves as one without caveats.

Take, for instance, the Trill and the symbionts, a pair of symbiotic races introduced in Deep Space Nine and most prominently portrayed by regular cast member Terry Farrell as Jadzia Dax. Symbionts are long-lived parasitic creatures who maintain their identity over the span of their Trill hosts’ lifetimes and the Trill gain the memories and experiences of the symbiont’s previous hosts. A Trill host may encounter people from the symbiont’s past life in a different host and be able to continue their relationships with minimal interruption, even though the Trill host still maintains a measure of their own personality.

In practice, this means that when characters interacted with Jadzia, the Trill host, for the first time since the symbiont Dax's previous male host had died, they would often have to recalibrate to Dax's new gender presentation, as the symbiont doesn't have its own sense of gender. Other characters’ casual self-correction of Dax’s pronouns and use of Jadzia’s name, as well as Jadzia’s memories of living as another gender, made the character something of a communal touchstone of transgender relatability for trans viewers. This was particularly notable considering the show aired in the 1990s and the go-to reference for transgender representation in media was the serial killer from Silence of the Lambs.

That said, it absolutely would be going too far to suggest that Star Trek was acting as a real representation of trans identity. Transgender people do not live literal multiple lives, nor do trans people exist as a merging of multiple personae into a cohesive whole. The only true way to represent a demographic in film and television is to actually bring that demographic into the creative process.

That’s why it’s so interesting to see Star Trek: Discovery attempt to bridge that gap between allegory and reality in its new season with the introduction of the non-binary human Adira (played by non-binary actor Blu del Barrio) and the trans Trill man Gray (played by trans actor Ian Alexander). To summarize the events of the latest episode, “Forget Me Not,” Adira reveals that they have merged with the symbiont Tal, an unprecedented occurrence for a human, but are unable to access memories the Discovery needs to continue its search for the remnants of Starfleet. The ship returns to the Trill homeworld, where the majority of the Trill leadership decries the human Adira as an abomination and refuses to help them. A dissenter surreptitiously helps them access a meditation pool where Adira is able to better commune with the symbiont’s past lives, forcing them to revisit traumatic memories of their boyfriend Gray’s death and the transfer of Tal into Adira.

It’s worth noting here that the introduction of Gray through their traumatic demise plays into an uncomfortable trend in queer storytelling where LGBTQ+ characters are often examined through their suffering. It’s a trope that reinforces the idea that queer and trans existence is inherently unhappy. Trans writer Riley Silverman already wrote a great article about why this is an issue, so I won’t belabor the point, but it complicates the more positive and radical message interwoven into the story, that focuses more on Adira’s role as Tal’s host.

Adira’s introduction in Star Trek: Discovery’s third episode is quietly revolutionary in how unremarkable it is. It would be perfectly in keeping with the progressive ideals of Federation society, 1,000 years in the future, to accept and normalize non-binary identity, but for the viewing audience, it's rare that a non-binary actor has played a non-binary character and that it's presented as not even worth comment. Admittedly, Adira’s non-binary identity could be made more explicit for those unfamiliar with Blu del Barrio or the show’s promotion of its progressive casting, but to make this dimension of trans experience explicit within Star Trek canon where only allegory was previously present is a massive step in the right direction.

This brings us back to the Trill. The previous generation of this franchise’s allegorical embodiment of queer experience, stripped of its specificity and amorphized into a non-human alien race. Adira’s status as a human who has merged with a symbiont is a threat to Trill self-identity, their holy and exclusive connection with the symbiont. If we take the Trill as the show’s previous personification of queerness, then it isn’t that much of a leap then to see Adira’s non-binary identity as a threat to established understanding of queer identity, a refutation against the sufficiency of allegory, and a statement of non-binary existence to those in the queer community that still reject it.

And the resolution of the episode would seem to uphold that reading as intentional. Adira is able to work through their repressed traumatic memories — again, a troubling way to introduce Gray, but here beside the point — and is able to reconnect with Tal’s past lives and the memories they contain. Adira connects with the history of the Trill, breaking down the illusion that they are different from one another simply because of their species and gaining the acceptance and embrace of the Trill leadership. In essence, the franchise that was previously restricted to allegory not only embraces a transgender representative but also signals that this all-too-human character marks a turning point to be celebrated.

It remains to be seen how Star Trek: Discovery will build upon this foundation. Both Blu del Barrio and Ian Alexander are cast regulars this season and the revelation that Gray lives within Adira offers the opportunity to address the character’s problematic introduction. But with respect to Adira, “Forget Me Not” is a pretty stunning evolution of Star Trek’s previous inadequacies. It feels good to be acknowledged as more than just a thought experiment. Blu del Barrio and Star Trek made me feel seen for who I am.

When talking about transgender identity, we often default to gender dysphoria as a centerpiece of the trans experience. The overly reductive and cis-normative sentiment of “being trapped” in a body different than one’s gender is what many still default to, but gender dysphoria reflects a wide range of physical, psychological, and emotional states that stem from a disconnect between a person’s gendered self-image and the person they see reflected in the mirror. However, what is often left out of the conversation about transgender experience is the inverse condition: the feeling of gender euphoria.

Gender euphoria is not as commonly portrayed in trans-centric media, which has historically traded on the pain and suffering of transgender people as a series of teachable moments or exploitable tragedies for the benefit of cisgender audiences, but that doesn’t mean that the joy of transgender self-discovery is entirely absent from popular culture. So let’s talk about Lotte and the revelatory experience of Being John Malkovich.

Lotte Schwartz (Cameron Diaz) starts the film as what is commonly referred to in the trans community’s vernacular as an “egg”: they are a transgender person who does not yet realize that they are trans. They present as a woman and are in a heteronormative relationship with their husband Craig (John Cusack), and though the relationship is not outright toxic it seems to be one based on mutual convenience than any shared interests or romantic energy. Something changes once Lotte hears about Craig’s discovery of a portal to enter the mind and perspective of character actor John Malkovich. You can see their egg crack as the idea of being in another body seeds itself into their consciousness.

When Lotte crouches at the entrance of the portal, their speech and body language indicate that they are scared of this big step, filled with trepidation as to what will be on the other side, even though it is exceedingly obvious that this is a step they want to take. So it is with many trans folks discovering for the first time their ability to transgress against the social norms that have prevented the actualization of their identity. As Lotte discovers, taking that terrifying first step is exhilarating and rewarding.

Lotte’s first time as John Malkovich lasts a grand total of fifteen minutes spent in the shower, but looking down on themselves, feeling the way Malkovich’s body moves and feels in just that brief time, it’s a revelation. Lotte doesn’t just find Malkovich sexually attractive, but in that moment thinks of themselves as sexually desirable, a noted contrast from the baggy, concealing clothes and posture that Lotte exhibits when in their own body. It’s no wonder, then, that Lotte immediately wants to go back into Malkovich after their physical form is spit out by the New Jersey Turnpike.

They start telling Craig about how much everything made sense when in Malkovich’s head, like they finally knew who they were. There is definitive joy in being “John Fucking Malkovich” and Lotte immediately starts fantasizing about the portal as a metaphor for a vagina and a desired melding of Malkovich’s masculine and feminine sides. From there it takes absolutely no time for Lotte to come out to Craig as a transgender man, fully embracing the idea of taking steps toward gender-affirming surgery.

Setting aside Craig’s reaction for a moment, it’s worth noting how this is reinforced once Maxine (Catherine Keener) starts seducing Lotte when they’re in Malkovich’s head. When Maxine calls Malkovich, Lotte feels something for the enticing feminine voice on the other end of the line, so much so that they influence Malkovich into taking her up on her out-of-the-blue offer of a date. On the date itself, Lotte revels in the way Maxine looks at them and Malkovich, feeling joy at being seen as attractive by a woman. 

It’s not uncommon for the sexuality of a transgender person to shift and evolve over the course of coming out or receiving hormone replacement therapy, because by definition an egg had been previously unaware of the totality of their own self. So when Maxine starts a relationship with Lotte – and, let’s be clear, engages in some explicit emotionally abusive and manipulative behavior toward Lotte at a particularly vulnerable time in their life – it’s as much a sexual awakening for Lotte as it was a gendered one, since it’s quite easy to assume that whatever relationship brought Craig and Lotte together was not based true love or sexual compatibility.

Craig, as the ostensible protagonist of this film, is the antithesis to Lotte’s self-actualization. Unlike Lotte, Craig isn’t obsessed with Malkovich as a means of self-discovery or a vehicle for romantic exploration. To Craig, Malkovich is like any of his other puppets, a mechanism for the obliteration of his own self in favor of being someone, anything else. He’s a character motivated by self-hatred that channels his loathing into controlling a wife whom he has no interest in actually having a relationship with.

When Lotte comes out to Craig as a trans man, Craig’s immediate reaction – like that of many spouses in a similar situation – is to try to deny Lotte’s reality, to equate the rush Lotte felt in self-discovery with the rush he feels in self-annihilation. Though the relationship wasn’t necessarily abusive before, it certainly becomes so at this point. Craig fundamentally denies Lotte’s reality and believes that he is justified in conforming them into the wife he wants to possess, even as his own designs are toward sexual infidelity with Maxine.

That’s why we later see Lotte walk back her gendered fascination with being John Malkovich. They’re doing so not just to hide the blooming relationship between Lotte and Maxine, but to mollify Craig so that they can continue their experimentation with gender expression and masculine sexuality. Like many trans folks with limited support systems and openly hostile partners or parents, Lotte is verbally denying their identity so that they can continue to explore it safely in secret. They resist the negative influence of someone who claims to love them in order to more fully embrace a love of oneself. When this self-exploration is discovered, Craig again mirrors reality by imprisoning Lotte for their transgression and denying access to the means of their growth and maturity.

It’s unfortunate that Lotte’s euphoric arc is largely eclipsed by Craig’s descent into self-destruction by this point in the film, but we can glean quite a bit from how Lotte is portrayed in the film’s final moments. After Maxine realizes the worth of the relationship she threw away with Lotte, the two live as a couple and raise the daughter they conceived while Lotte was in Malkovich’s body. In the poolside epilogue set many years later, Lotte appears comfortable in her own body, wearing feminine clothes but also showing more skin and displaying a more relaxed and comfortable posture than they’d had anywhere else in the film.

One could point to the apparent femininity of Lotte’s public presentation as a refutation of Lotte’s transgender identity, but that would deny a few ways this scene could be interpreted. The way Lotte expresses their gender through clothing is not the same thing as their gender identity, which could still be binarily transmasculine or even non-binary, a distinction that wasn’t as well-known in popular discourse upon the film’s 1999 release and might have been harder to portray. The clothing Lotte wears, though, does not nullify their stated self-perception as a trans man they embraced earlier in the film. Trans folks undergo a variety of therapies and procedures to achieve transition goals that don't necessarily adhere to cis-normative beauty standards. And, particularly when it comes to swimwear, their clothing options may still need to adhere to societal notions of what is acceptable for “men” and “women” of their body type to wear in public.

The biggest takeaway shouldn’t be a dissection of the specific labels and affirming choices this trans person has adopted in the intervening years. The point of Lotte’s story, if not the entirety of Being John Malkovich, is that they have finally achieved happiness. Stemming from that initial feeling of gender euphoria, that glorious moment of experimentation that brought out the depths of their true self, Lotte found a way to feel comfortable in their own body, a partner that loves them, and a life that is as bright and wonderful as a trip to the pool. Being John Malkovich was simply a first step in becoming the true Lotte Schwartz.

If Being John Malkovich's exploration of identity through surreal storytelling is your cup of tea, then you'll likely enjoy the latest film for its screenwriter, Charlie Kaufman. Check out our review of I'm Thinking of Ending Things, one of the best films of the year.

For as long as there have been sports, there have been LGBTQ+ athletes. ESPN Plus always has lots of live sports, but it also has documentary films and series that tell athletes' stories, and that includes LGBTQ+ competitors. These stories bring joy, struggles, love and connections to life as these sportsmen and women find ways to be true to themselves on and off the fields of play. Here are the best LGBTQ+ shows to watch on ESPN Plus.

30 for 30: Renee

The ESPN documentary series 30 for 30 is well known for telling dramatic sports stories with depth and context, and this film in the series focuses on transgender tennis player Renee Richards. Born as Richard Raskind, Richards began exploring gender identity over a decade before transitioning in 1975. Renee had long been involved in competitive tennis, and she attempted to continue competing as a woman but she found herself blocked by United States Tennis Association rules. In 30 for 30: Renee , you can learn about the court case that followed, and the struggles in Renee's personal life then and now. Be aware that Renee is very raw, discussing thoughts of suicide among other topics.

Watch Renee on ESPN+

The Courage Game

Learn about a one-of-a-kind lacrosse game that is more than a simple exhibition. The Courage Game started with an All-American college lacrosse player, Andrew Goldstein, who came out as gay publicly. His story, which was profiled on TV years ago, was an inspiration to a young kid who was dealing with coming out himself. Knowing that an athlete that was drafted and turned pro could be out and proud inspired young Braden, who formed a friendship with Andrew. This led to The Courage Game, a charity lacrosse game that reaches out to gay youth to give them hope and comfort.

Watch The Courage Game on ESPN+

30 for 30 Shorts: Mack Wrestles

Texas High School sports has a reputation for tense competition and rabid fanbases, but in Mack Wrestles , we can see the ugly sides of those traits as a trans athlete upsets the status quo. Mack Beggs already identified as male by high school, but the rules in place forced him to compete with the gender of his birth. Rather than walk away, Mack did just that while also advocating for changes to the rules. In the face of competitors that refused to wrestle or cried foul in protest, Mack's success on the mat and as an advocate can leave you feeling hopeful.

Watch Mack Wrestles on ESPN+

SC Featured: Bingham

Stories of the LGBTQ+ community can be inspiring, but they can also be painful. Mark Bingham was an amazing man, as a public relations executive, national champion rugby player, and aspiring filmmaker. After college, he came out to his family and close friends, but not to his rugby teammates. This all changed when he joined a new predominately-gay rugby team, which gave him a chance to be himself and help change people's minds. His life took a heroic yet tragic turn aboard United Flight 93 on September 11, 2001.

Watch Bingham on ESPN+

30 for 30: Unmatched

Unmatched is the story of longtime rival tennis greats Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova. Navratilova was the first American professional athlete to come out, first as bisexual and later identifying as gay. Her challenges in living as a new U.S. citizen and out in the 1980s cast her as a 180 degree opposite to her rival Evert, yet the two became amazing friends. This story covers their matches and their friendship, as each recount the challenges of the times.

Watch 30 for 30: Unmatched on ESPN+

E:60 Brittney Griner

This is the story of Brittney Griner, a basketball superstar who has lived a life that is anything but easy. Griner was targeted and bullied as a child, and she was even taunted as not being a real girl. She found herself in sports, and as she excelled at basketball she grew confident enough to come out and live her best life. She went on to win a national championship in college and a WNBA champion as well. She became the first openly gay athlete to sign an endorsement deal with Nike.

Watch E:60 Brittney Griner on ESPN+

UFC 239: Nunes vs. Holm

Amanda Nunes may have given herself the nickname "The Lioness", but her excellence in the UFC octagon has earned her another one. She is the GOAT— short for Greatest Of All Time, as Nunes has recently known no equal. She is dominant in two different weight classes, as she reigns as champion of both Women's Featherweight and Bantamweight divisions. Nunes is also proudly out as a lesbian so she serves as the first openly gay champion in the UFC. Nunes is married to Nina Ansaroff who is also a UFC MMA athlete. Celebrate Pride Month by watching the Lioness dominate back in UFC 239, as she dispatched a great fighter in Holly Holm. Starting June 21, you can also see Nunes win over Felicia Spencer from UFC 250 on ESPN+

Watch Nunes vs. Holm on ESPN+

Bottom line

Sports provides such a wide landscape for stories of triumph, especially for the LGBTQ+ athletes featured in these stories. Renee provides a powerful story of challenging unjust rules while also examining the real toll the fight for rights can take on an individual. It is a story that resonates even with the events of our current times, and can give us new perspectives on the people fighting for their own liberty each day.

A favorite of mine is E:60 Brittney Griner , which is far more than just a short segment with an athlete profile. This extended story goes deep into Griner's life before sports, and the pain she suffered simply for coming out and being who she is inside. Knowing that her relationship with her father hasn't improved is heartbreaking, but likely to resonate with LGBTQ+ who watch that have their own difficult family stories to tell.

One of our favorite mediums here is TV, thanks to the breadth of stories you can check out and the experiences you can witness. This is especially important during Pride Month, where we want to celebrate the LGBTQ+ community and the progress its made over the past few decades. To do that, why not pop on your favorite inclusive show or rewatch some of your favorite moments?

TV has had a rocky relationship with LGBTQ+ representation, with a lot of moments that are often sanitized for advertisers or networks. So a lot of the moments on this list are celebrated simply for existing. A lot of them could even be seen as coy or basic by today's standards, especially with some of the later moments on this list. However, that doesn't diminish how much they mattered to viewers at the time of their airing, or how they impacted TV. This is definitely not an exhaustive list, but here are just a few of our favorite moments, in chronological order.

My So Called Life — Rickie comes out as gay (Season 1, Episode 19)

Audiences always knew that Rickie Vasquez was a part of the LGBTQ+ community on My So-Called Life. Throughout the series' sole season, he dealt with a lot of issues that people in the community would be familiar with: abusive relatives, conflicts with trying to find where you feel comfortable to express yourself, and others. However, the character only came out as fully gay in the final episode after spending the series identifying as bisexual.

It wasn't surprising in hindsight, but Rickie as a character, and his coming out, are remembered fondly by TV watchers of the mid-90s. Just take a look at the clip above to get an idea of who Rickie was.

Deep Space Nine — Rejoined (Season 4, Episode 6)

Star Trek is Star Trek. It had the first interracial kiss on TV back in the 1960s. It's a downright iconic and groundbreaking franchise and that reputation extends far beyond the original series.

Deep Space Nine featured one of the earliest televised lesbian kisses on TV between Jadzia Dax and Dr. Lenara Kahn. Dax is one of the series' most intriguing characters, an alien species that swaps bodies, so while technically they're reliving a once heterosexual love, that doesn't seem to matter since the plot focuses on just the relationship. The episode is a beautiful look at what happens when you relive love once thought lost, but it was one of the first times a lot of people saw a same-sex kiss on screen as well.

Friends — The first lesbian wedding (Season 2, Episode 11)

Back in 1996, the sitcom was downright revolutionary. In the Season 2 episode "The One with the Lesbian Wedding" the gang attended — you guessed it — a lesbian wedding between Ross's ex-wife, Carol, and her partner, Susan. It was the second gay marriage seen on a TV sitcom (that honor goes to Roseanne ) but it was the first lesbian wedding.

What also made it such a big deal was that it wasn't treated as a gimmick; it was just something the titular friends were a part of. Back then, to have a wedding treated like it wasn't a big deal was unheard of.

The Ellen Show — Ellen comes out (Season 4, Episodes 22 and 23)

The Ellen Show flirted around with star Ellen Degeneres' sexuality for many seasons, having her date men. However, in the two-part "The Puppy Episode," which aired in 1997, the series finally confirmed that the character was gay, which then coincided with the real comedian's very public coming out.

This was a huge deal at the time, and the episode was a huge ratings success. But there was, of course, a lot of backlash. Advertisers backed out and right-wing groups complained. But worst of all, the actors involved in the episode had trouble finding work. Guest star Laura Dern said she couldn't find work for a year and a half after appearing on the episode.

But considering that since then Dern has won an Oscar and Degeneres has been one of the most successful talk show hosts of all time, we think it worked out OK.

Dawson's Creek — Jack and Tobey's long, romantic kiss (Season 4, Episode 20)

People in same-sex relationships had kissed on TV before, but it wasn't until Dawson's Creek that the kiss actually seemed to mean something.

Jack had already been a part of a gay kiss before, with his partner, Ethan, but his moment with Tobey was long and passionate. It wasn't just a peck. It was a full-blown smooch. It seems strange to rate kisses on TV in terms of how long and seemingly real they are, but back when TV execs and advertisers were deathly afraid of any representation on screen, it all means something more.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer — Willow and Tara kiss (Season 5, Episode 16)

It's tough to distill the iconic, groundbreaking relationship between Willow and Tara into one moment, but we're going to try. The couple, which began timidly in Buffy the Vampire Slayer's fourth season, became one of the first lesbian relationships many young viewers saw back in the early 2000s. And for a while, it was a dream. Them sharing a forlorn-and-emotional (but romantic!) kiss in Season 5's "The Body" was one of the first times audiences just saw a kiss not meant to boost ratings on screen. It was just something that happened. It was a part of them, and it was beautiful.

Of course, it would go downhill from there, but for a while, Willow and Tara was what we had.

The Wire — Omar Little (Season 1, Episode 6)

Omar Little is one of the greatest outlaw characters in modern television, and he broke ground by defying stereotypes in the black gay community.

Omar's sexuality was central to his character through all five seasons of The Wire, contrasting his intense robberies with calm embraces with his boyfriends out in front of his Baltimore row home. A critical moment for Omar comes in the sixth episode of Season 1, where Omar's first boyfriend, Brandon, is killed after a bounty placed on his head is doubled for him being gay.

This sets off Omar on a quest for revenge against a gang that lasts several seasons and leads him to become a street informant. -Roy Delgado

Legend of Korra — Korrasami (Season 4, Episode 13)

A genre often lagging behind in terms of LGBTQ+ representation is kids' animation. There have been huge strides made in this space thanks to cartoons like (Adventure Time and Steven Universe, but Legend of Korra was one of the first to have an on-screen canonical lesbian relationship.

Sure it came in the last minute of the show, but Korra and Asami going off into the Spirit World holding hands, looking into each other's eyes is a milestone moment in representation. Even more important was how open the showrunners were about the scene's intended purpose.

Hannibal — That finale (Season 3, Episode 13)

Hannibal had been toying the audience concerning the relationship between Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter since Season 1 and it often had a will they/won't they quality, with some accusing the show of queerbaiting. However, the show went completely for it in the final episode, not only confirming that the two had a love for each other, but that Hannibal's plan to turn Will into a monster actually worked (to an extent).

I won't spoil the finale, so watch the clip above at your own risk, but believe me when I say that screams were heard from Fannibals everywhere when they embraced each other.

Black Mirror — San Junipero (Season 3, Episode 4)

Black Mirror is a dark anthology — sometimes too dark for its own good — which is part of the reason why the episode "San Junipero" shines so brightly. It's also a lesbian love story about coming out, acceptance, feeling comfortable in your own skin (or lack thereof), the meaning of life and death, and so many other topics.

We can highlight this episode simply because it's uplifting and wonderfully written, but the relationship at its core feels real despite the futuristic tech on display. In a world where gay relationships are often met with tragedy, to have a happy ending with one feels groundbreaking on its own.

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend — Gettin' Bi (Season 1, Episode 14)

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is a musical show that touches upon a lot of subjects, including mental illness and sexuality. It also just happens to have one of the best explanations of bisexuality on TV with the song "Gettin' Bi," sung by the character Daryl as he comes out to his coworkers.

It's a joyful proclamation of coming out, but it also breaks down some of the stereotypes concerning bisexual people in the process. Send this to anybody in your life who might not get what bisexuality is, and no, it doesn't mean you're just gay. Bi's legit!

One Day at a Time — Elena coming out (Season 1, Episode 10 and 11)

One Day at a Time is a prime example of how you remake a series. It takes the basic formula of the original sitcom and updates it for the modern age, and that includes some more modern problems, like racism, classism, mental illness, and coming out.

Elena Alvarez had been struggling with her sexuality for most of Season 1, but then she finally came out to her family in "Sex Talk." It took some getting used to by her family, but they eventually accepted her (minus her father) in a way that felt honest. Her sexuality then became just a part of her character as she was able to build a relationship with her non-binary partner.

How grounded One Day at a Time kept the story is what puts it on this list, even if it's imperfect. Her story later with her father (pictured above) only adds to her character.

Brooklyn 99 — Rosa Diaz comes out as bisexual (Season 5, Episode 10)

Brooklyn 99 already had great LGBTQ+ representation in the form of Captain Holt and his struggles to not only get recognized by the NYPD for his years of service as a gay black man but also became the best boss of the 99 ever.

When Rosa Diaz came out as bisexual on the show, however, it took the sitcom to a whole other level. Actress Stephanie Beatriz came out as bi not too long before her character, so that imbues the episode with a personal touch. The sensitivity with which the show handled the coming out though is imperfect, but it's sweet and shows that you can find a support system in the unlikeliest of places.

Steven Universe — Ruby and Sapphire's wedding (Season 5, Episode 23 and 24)

For a cartoon primarily aimed at children, Steven Universe is unabashedly queer. The show had featured same-sex relationships and commentary on gender expression since its first season, but no characters encompass that better than Ruby and Sapphire, a.k.a. Garnet when they fuse. The reveal that Garnet was in fact two Gems in love in the episode "Jail Break" was jaw-dropping, but they affirmed their love for each other with their wedding a few seasons later.

As we've previously discussed on this list, same-sex weddings are serious business when it comes to representation and the build-up and payoff to Ruby and Sapphire's wedding shows how important the relationship is to both the show and its characters.

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia — Mac comes out as gay to his father (Season 13, Episode 10)

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia isn't known for its sincerity, especially in those earlier seasons and when it came to Mac's sexuality. His homoerotic tendencies were treated as a joke early on, but he finally came out in Season 12 to his friends over a lottery ticket. (Yes, really.) It's when he truly embraces who he is in Season 13 and comes out to his father that the character becomes iconic.

In typical Sunny fashion, Mac puts on an interpretive dance that is actually extremely well-choreographed. While his real father rejects him, the true emotional crux of the scene comes when Frank, who's become Mac's surrogate father, finally understands and is in tears. It's Always Sunny isn't known for playing it straight ever, so it really punches you in the gut when it does.

Pose — Angel and Papi get engaged/Candy dies (Season 2, Episode 10)

Pose has been knocking down barriers in its quest for absolute TV domination, and that's especially true in its LGBTQ+ representation. It's rare to see a trans character on TV, although shows have been making huge strides on that front, and that certainly includes Pose.

Angel and Papi are so in love with each other, so when they propose to each other in the Season 2 finale it's just a joyous moment. In contrast, the death of Candy, also in Season 2, is a huge moment for how we talk about trans lives and the impact of the AIDS epidemic in the 1990s.

These two moments couldn't be any different, but they do show one thing: trans lives matter.

What did we miss?

There are so many moments and iconic shows we couldn't include. We wanted to put Will & Grace on here just for existing and introducing many Americans to gay lead characters. We had hoped to include some recent moments as well, like Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy becoming a canonical couple in the Harley Quinn animated series, or Catra and Adora's kiss saving the world in She-ra and the Princesses of Power.

What else did we miss?

It's been 20 years since two witches found love on Buffy the Vampire Slayer . In 2000 we were living in an entirely different world. There was no marriage equality, the issues of trans folx were largely ignored, and the tragic murder of Matthew Sheppard was only 2 years old. In the decades that have since passed we've seen massive steps forward for the LGBTQ+ community in the real world. But movies haven't kept up, and the lack of representation on screen is galling at best.

Token representation isn't representation at all

Chances are if you're alive in 2020, you know a queer person. (And if you're reading this, you are and you do.) Gay, bisexual, trans, and nonbinary are just a few of the identities people may call their own. While LGBTQ+ folks are more open and visible than they have ever been, the same isn't true of the media we consume.

Somehow, executives have decided that at best, we deserve a token mention in the biggest franchises of movies and television. Unless an openly queer person is involved, it's rare to see more than one LGBTQ character in a film. Instead of actual characters that we can identify with and call our own, the gay community is left with nothing but scraps.

We get a mention of a gay character in Marvel movies, arguably some of the biggest blockbusters on the planet. A brief on-screen kiss in Star Wars between two minor characters isn't acceptable. If television can give us big, beautiful, in-depth arcs as we've seen from the likes of Grey's Anatomy , then why aren't movies following suit? They can blame Chinese censors, or conservative watchers, or a hundred different things. Still, the truth of the matter is that we deserve better.

LGBTQ+ folks are a huge demographic. We consume movies and television, we purchase Blu-rays and go to conventions. We deserve to see ourselves on the big screen. Plenty of people would like to celebrate the small moments that we do get, and I'm not saying they aren't worthy of being celebrated. What I'm saying is that it isn't enough. Token representation isn't enough, and we shouldn't pretend that it is, or deliver a golf clap when it arrives. All that does is compound what we do get. If the people in charge of making movies think they can get away with minor representation and not worry about it, we as consumers should make it clear that isn't the case in whatever way we can.

If it isn't inclusive and intersectional, it's wrong

In so many cases, what little representation we do get is overwhelmingly white, and that's a problem. LGBTQ+ people run the gamut. We're white and Black and brown. We are lesbians, and gay men, genderqueer, trans, nonbinary. We are rich and poor, fat and skinny, healthy and disabled, and our representation deserves to show us in all of the shades that we exist.

That means when it comes to representation, it has to be more than a token. It has to be inclusive and intersectional. People don't exist in a single aspect. They are complicated and multi-faceted, and heterosexual people get to see themselves in a hundred different ways onscreen. We deserve the same thing. Gay kids deserve to see themselves on the screen, to know that they can be happy no matter what they look like. No matter who else they are.

If we're going to demand representation, then we have to request that it's done right. That means being inclusive of everyone who identifies as LGBTQ+ even when it's complicated. It means that our representation has to be intersectional. It's more than white, affluent lesbians in LA. It's more than white, working-class gay men in Philly. These may have been the beacons of allowing more LGBTQ+ people onto the screen, but it's 2020, and it's honestly time our pop culture caught up.

Television is catching up but movies seem to be stalled

When considering representation in pop culture, there's a significant gap between the small screen and the big one. TV shows have delivered fantastic arcs that humanize LGBTQ+ people. It may have started with Buffy and The L Word , but its reach goes so much further. Shows like She-Ra , L Word: Generation Q , and Grey's Anatomy have helped to humanize and normalize queer folks across the spectrum.

It's clear that borders have been broken down by TV writer's rooms, and that those shows have gotten significant boosts in watchers, and popularity because of it. So if it's clear that engaging with LGBTQ+ viewers pays dividends for shows, why are movies so slow to catch up? I don't have an answer, but it's a question queer people are asking. I'd like to believe that it's only a matter of time until we see the queer representation in movies that we deserve. Still, it's becoming more evident that the only way we'll get that is by having LGBTQ+ people making movies. To be very frank, it isn't enough.

What comes next?

Queer people aren't going anywhere. We've always been here, despite what some people would have you think. While representation is slowly coming to the big screen, it's not enough. We should be light years past where we are, and only by being critical of piecemeal representation and demanding more are we ever going to see the changes that we deserve.

Hulu is a great way to watch content online, and the service has a wide variety of LGBTQ+ hits and hidden gems. You can lose yourself in entertainment and celebrate Pride Month with these wonderful LGBTQ+ shows and movies on Hulu, including Steven Universe

Best Overall: Steven Universe

Steven Universe is a fantastic animated series that can be enjoyed by kids and adults alike and has set a new bar for LGBTQ+ representation and handling related issues. The show centers on Steven and the powerful Crystal Gems, a team of magical heroes that guard against evil. Steven is half-human and half-Gem boy but as his powers develop, he discovers his place among the team to save the universe.

LGBTQ+ themes exist throughout the show, within the families, romantic relationships, and gender identities of many of the characters. The show bends the societal ideas of gender personality types, and also features a wedding between two female characters. The show has won numerous awards, and received acclaim for the way it represents these issues within the community, including a GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Kids & Family Program. It also provides a great opportunity for viewers of all ages to see a part of themselves represented in the story.

Pros:

• Fun, adventurous storytelling
• Groundbreaking representation
• Positive messages

Cons:

• Hulu doesn't have Season 5 or Future yet

Best LGBTQ+ Film: Portrait of a Lady on Fire

Portrait of a Lady on Fire is an artistic French film about an artist and her subject bonding and falling in love. This tale covers topics including forbidden love, loss, suicide, the roles of women in society, and arranged marriage. It won several awards as the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, and now it's available to stream on Hulu.

In our review of the fim , we examined how the focus of this love story is on the journey the two women share, and not unexpected twists or turns towards the outcome. Audiences are fortunate to be able to enjoy this streaming so soon. It was due to remain in theaters during the spring, but that run was cut short when theaters were forced to close.

Pros:

• Emotional performances
• Patience in its pacing
• Beautiful cinematography

Cons:

• Not a traditional happy ending

Best Chuckles: Will & Grace

Will & Grace could be considered a controversial choice because the show isn't for everyone. This sitcom started in the late 1990's, and it was long running hit featuring two lead gay characters. While the show came after Ellen's seminal TV moment, it was still groundbreaking, bringing in these stories week after week to millions of viewers.

However, Will & Grace has gotten some criticism from people within the LGBTQ+ community for using many of the tired cliches that have been a part of gay characters for years. However, others point to the fact that Will & Grace gave audiences a chance to learn and understand that people are people, no matter their differences. Will & Grace had a chance to see the world that changed around them, as the show was revived in 2017 — a full 11 years after the first run ended.

Pros:

• A trailblazing show for gay main characters
• Lots of laughs with 11 seasons to enjoy
• Hulu has original series and revival

Cons:

• Uses some tired cliches of LGBTQ+ characters

Best Drama: The L Word

The L Word has a basic premise that expands as the characters branch out, cross paths, and hook up. At its core, the show follows the lives of lesbians in Los Angeles in a core friend group. The series originally aired on Showtime, and it uses sharp writing to make audiences feel like they are sneaking into the characters' homes.

The show does lean on a soap opera feeling at times, which could be a good or bad thing depending on what you are looking for. The series led to several sequel series, including Generation Q and the Real L Word. It is also considered a forerunner to the excellent Queer As Folk, which was also on Showtime.

Pros:

• Open discussions of difficult topics
• Alluring storylines

Cons:

• Soap opera feeling
• Show gets weaker as seasons go on

You Better Work: RuPaul's Drag Race

Sometimes TV is meant to be fun, and you can't find more fun than searching for America's next drag superstar. RuPaul has been synonymous with drag for decades, while also maintaining a career as a musician, model and actor. He brings his reputation to this reality show, which shines a light on the next generation of drag queens.

The show has been running for over a decade, and it follows a tried and true reality competition format. Contestants arrive with a dream, and then face challenges, get mentorship, work the runway, and face the judges. Hulu has six seasons for you to binge (out of 12, including All Star seasons), so grab your remote and give a twirl. Just note that the show has received some criticism for being behind on LGBTQ+ representation, especially as it deals with trans contestants. Some of the early seasons even feature some transphobic humor, which was rectified in the later seasons.

Pros:

• Fun competition
• Famous mentors
• Fashion galore
• Huge personalities

Cons:

• Reality isn't for everyone
• Can be somewhat repetitive
• Not inclusive towards trans people
• Only has six seasons

All in the Fam: Modern Family

Modern Family started out with representation in mind, but it had to grow into greater representations of love for LGBTQ+ fans. The show, which focuses on the new shape of family that goes beyond the 1950's nuclear family, includes a now famous gay couple in Cam and Mitchell. They may have started out with some common stereotypes and without displays of affection, but they grew through the run of the show with on-camera kissing, marriage, and having two kids.

Modern Family also dealt with the rest of the family dealing with LGBTQ+ issues, and not just revolving around Cam and Mitchell. Instead of tired tropes of bigots learning to be accepting, they showed how members of the community are like everyone else, and come in all shapes and styles.

Pros:

• An outstanding cast of comic players
• Fred Willard excellent as Phil's Dad
• Cam and Mitchell are iconic
• A lot of seasons to watch

Cons:

• Show became weaker as seasons went on
• The integrated sponsorships are a bit too obvious

Bottom line

Hulu has so many shows and movies that deal with LGBTQ+ themes, characters and actors that it's hard to narrow down a list like this, but Steven Universe is worthy of a primary recommendation. The show touches so many areas with acceptance, love and representation that can be comforting or even a jumping off point for healthy discussions with the family. The show has adventure and storylines that makes you want to keep watching the next episode everytime you click to watch.

If you are looking for something more serious, check out Portrait of a Lady on Fire . This French love film will take you on an emotional journey, and give you a chance to watch a film at home that could have still been in theaters.

Credits — The team that worked on this guide

Roy Delgado is a freelance writer for CordCutters. He focuses on a wide range of streaming topics, including sports, prestige series and award-winning films. He loves binges, marathons, and representation of all kinds.