After almost three years in the making, it’s now being officially reported that a reboot of the hit series Queer As Folk is being developed at Peacock. The streaming has been given an eight-episode season over.
According to Deadline, Stephen Dunn, noted for directing an episode of the anthology series Little America, will executive produce and reimagine the project under the watchful eye of Russell T. Davies, the man responsible for the original British series in 1999.
The Showtime drama, starring Gale Harold, Randy Harrison, Peter Paige, Hal Sparks and Sharon Gless, took stories from the original series and expanded them over a five-season, 83-episode run from 2000 to 2005. It marked the first hourlong American TV drama to put gay men at its center and helped usher in a new era of programming that put LGBTQ characters front and center.
This new version will examine the lives of a group of queer friends living in New Orleans. Dunn has worked to develop the project since 2018.
“It is a surreal honour to adapt the notoriously groundbreaking series by Russell T. Davies. When the show originally aired, the idea of unapologetic queer stories on TV was so provocative that I felt I could only watch Queer as Folk in secret,” Dunn said in a release.“But so much has changed in the last 20 years and how wonderful would it be if the next generation didn’t have to watch Queer as Folk alone in their dank basements with the sound muted, but with their family and friends and the volume cranked all the way to the max…”
Originally developed for Bravo, Queer as Folk was among the projects that moved in 2019 as NBCUniversal began focusing on originals for Peacock and as the reality-focused cable network exited the scripted space. Sepiol headed drama for Peacock at the time the project moved to the streamer under then-head of originals Bill McGoldrick. Peacock is now part of a content portfolio that is overseen by Susan Rovner, with Katz heading up scripted for the streamer, NBC and cable networks including USA and Syfy.
I loved both the UK and American versions, and I’m glad the new version will feature a more diverse cast. I’m definitely curious to see how a new generation of queers will navigate through the world of dating, friendships, social media, etc.
I’m also curious to see if this version of QAF will be as scandalous and as unapologetic as the Showtime series was in the 2000s.
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