Television review: Man in an Orange Shirt; Against the Law; Is It Safe to be Gay in the UK?; Queer Britain; The Handmaid’s Tale

The action opens with Michael and Thomas meeting during the war. Thomas has been injured in battle, which has the convenient side effect of ramping up his chat-up lines: “I can’t button my fly single-handed,” he purrs, and Michael promptly obliges. After the conflict, the two embark on a frantic, Farrow & Ball-tinted frot-a-thon even as Michael’s wedding to Flora looms. Was it erotic? Well, the jumpers were pretty hot.

What ensued was a very sad, very typical story where the sex and the sobbing alike were ladled on with ever more lyrical, swirling strings. It certainly gave everyone their dignity, but in a clipped, near-parodic, “Are you quite all right, darling?” way. It felt a bit basic and trad, especially with so many complex relationships confined to two episodes. I read somewhere that Gale had to lose an interlude on Aids and Clause 28. Too complicated; too messy, perhaps, too.

Therein lies a problem for gay stories today. The fight for the past 50 years has been for many things, not the least of which is respectability. Now that this has been achieved, with the legalisation of gay marriage, some are left with the lingering sense that respectability is very nice, but also limiting and dull. Man in an Orange Shirt typifies this unease — the only garish thing in it is that orange shirt, featured in a portrait Thomas paints of Michael. Was the shop out of taupe?

A growing worry was the casting of Jackson-Cohen. He is a good actor, and good as Michael, but he is also very, very handsome, and the suspicion crept up that we might be less forgiving if he weren’t so forgivable on the eye. If Michael is clearly a victim of circumstance, moulded by the mores of his day, he shows an obliviousness that verges on perversity. He is also wildly bland. Yet Thomas and Flora can’t resist him, and the assumption is that we can’t, either. What would it have been like if someone less classically handsome had played him? Toby Jones? Simon Russell Beale? Would we have forgiven him then?

All dramas face this question, but it feels especially pertinent here. Beauty can be such a handy sanitiser, when the topic is rather dirtier and more difficult than that. Here we were given the “right” type of gay hero: sweet, handsome, stylishly tortured and “straight-acting”, whatever that broadly means. This applies to his grandson in the second episode, too. In short, we all like him: but what about the not-so-right ones?

The week before, you may have caught Against the Law (still on iPlayer), a dramatisation of the story of Peter Wildeblood, who was jailed for his sexuality in the 1950s. This didn’t cow Wildeblood, but spurred him on to write about his experiences and to testify for Lord Wolfenden’s report, the conclusions of which led, 10 laborious years later, to said decriminalisation. This moving piece, a mixture of drama and real-life testimony, featured a fine central performance by Danny Mays as the journalist. At least here I can’t complain about pretty-boy casting: I do so love Mays’s doughy face, the last bread roll left in the basket.

Against the Law gave Wildeblood his dues, but wasn’t afraid to point out the limits of his work. Testifying to Wolfenden, he makes his argument chiefly for the “discreet homosexual” and frowns on the “pansies”, “effeminate creatures making an exhibition of themselves”. A fellow inmate of Wildeblood, whom I can only call a screaming queen (euphemism would reduce him), acts as a permanent irritant. The drama rightly asks, what tolerance for him? This applies as much today as it did back then, and as much within the gay community as without.

Is It Safe to Be Gay in the UK? reminded us of the distance left to go — a harrowing documentary telling the stories of the victims of recent homophobic violence. Thus we met Connor, a fey and dreamy creature wearing what seemed like a Quentin Crispish crimped ’do, plus vibrant white eyeshadow. It turns out this haircut was less an affectation, though, than a bit of tactical rearrangement.

Moving into a new flatshare, Connor, whom we can call one of Wildeblood’s “effeminate creatures”, was placed next door to a young man from a Catholic Nigerian background. They didn’t have much contact, except that on the first night, the neighbour crept into Connor’s room and embedded a claw hammer in his skull. It was still deep in there when he was found the next morning.

Connor survived, luckily, and perhaps the most cheering thing I heard all week is that he will get married next year. (He wants butterflies everywhere; his boyfriend is gruffly unsure.) Yet others haven’t been so lucky. Obviously, these were extreme instances, but they were undeniable. One man was punched and stamped to death in the middle of Trafalgar Square.

My only frustration with the film was that it stated at the start that “Hate crimes increased by 147% last summer”, but didn’t explain how this was measured and why it might have happened. Any clue, any speculation, would have been good. Is this a blip or a backlash?

We might also ask what the next 50 years will hold. Will the term “gay” even be much in use? Queer Britain charted a resurgence of the word “queer” as a positive term, embracing a whole range of 21st-century people. This has surprised me: when I was younger, “queer” had a particular stink to it. Now, though, it seems fresher than poor old “gay”. (I guess that’s what an endorsement from David Cameron will do for you.) This documentary sweetly tried to address this, but got distracted by more prurient things such as getting a trans man to explain at length how he masturbated (the answer: a quite bewildering array of latex, part finger puppet, part funky napkin ring).

All well and good, but the truly interesting question is one of terminology: how that changes through time, and how it defines who you are. Nowadays everybody seems to be fluid and multiple — and, yes, it can seem slightly baffling. It doesn’t bother me at all, but I did cackle as the film listed the full set of initials covering a whole range of identities. Deep breath: LGBTTQQIAAP. I had heard gender was a performance, but who knew it needed subtitles? You had to sympathise with the girl who guessed what the I stood for: “Indifferent?”

Indifference is, arguably, the final aim. Yet I’m sceptical that this can ever happen: sexuality is too sensitive a topic to remain neutral for long. One sweet note in Man in an Orange Shirt is the heroes’ plea to do simple things with their lover: “Raking leaves, long walks, doing unbedroomy things.” Quite apart from the actual, real interest of raking leaves, this is a noble sentiment. But it does naively elide the fact that even if society says that it’s fine with your bedroomy things, it isn’t quite. It wants, it needs to know, and will promptly smite you if it’s politically expedient.

All of which was terrifyingly spelt out in The Handmaid’s Tale, which concluded last Sunday. This was a chilling, exhausting, masterfully told saga, and sincerely, great as it was, I never want to see it again. It laid out its thesis too well. However, unlike the novel, the show has concluded in an open-ended fashion, leaving the way clear for the second series. We should see where June is in 50 years.