If they brought back Queer as Folk

Probably suicide.

It would be endless hours of him trolling DL.

Brian would be convinced he still looks 30 and creeping on 20 year olds, who think he is pathetic.

If anything I think Gale Harold is much handsomer now than when he was 30.

It’s like the cool jock in school. Everyone thought they were cool then, but most are sad and pathetic later in life.

I think he'd be on Grindr all day and night and still fucking everything he could. And yes, he'd still be good at it. Dead behind the eyes though.

Would the lesbians still be together? Mmmm probably not, the nice blonde one would be in a new loving relationship but the brunette would have turned into a female Brian.

Michael would still be pathetic.......perhaps living at home taking care of Cagney (or is it Lacey?). He'd have a date once a year or so.

The blonde painting twink would have settled into a relationship in New York. He would be pathetically needy and his partner would cheat on him incessantly without him knowing.

The older balding one and the other one who dabbled in porn (can't for the life of me remember their names), would still be together living a loved up successful relationship in the 'burbs with a couple of kids.

Have I forgotten anyone?

R6 is probably right.

Botoxed and probably face lifted, dyed hair, claiming to be 39 on Grindr and fucking 24 year olds who are insecure about their looks and like that an older guy thinks they're something special. (That and ones with daddy issues.)

And trolling Datalounge a lot but rarely, if ever, posting.

The blonde twink would tell stories about him to his NY/LA art world friends in a "can you believe I ever thought this loser in Pittsburgh was cool" sort of way, though the fact that he was in a relationship with a 30something guy when he was 18 and 19 will at some level add to his allure.

I hope by this time Brian and Michael would have stopped hanging out.

This is a more recent photo of Harold. The one at OP may be ten years old or more.

You guys are beyond clueless if you think a handsome daddy top with a great career is gonna have problems finding hot younger bottoms. Do you guys even understand how the world works?

Where did anyone post that theory R10?

Harold looks decent. The rest haven't aged well. Here's a recent reunion of the whole gang

Randy Harrison is 42 years old now. He (or his character Justin) can play "Daddy" now.

It’s not a question of whether Brian can still get laid. It’s that his attitude that was alluring and sexy 30 years ago would be pathetic and sad in a 50 year old man. Cool has a shelf life. The character would have to have grown and matured to not be creepy and a joke.

R11, cause posters are saying he’d be a loser trolling for dick on Grindr.

He might not be “cool” anymore but being a rich handsome Daddy top means he doesn’t need to be “hip”.

So where would he be finding these "hot younger bottoms" R15?

Scruff?

The world's largest gay disco that just happened to be located in Pittsburgh's thriving gay quarter?

Brian would've moved to a gay retirement home where he is the queen bee still calling the shots.

The US version of QAF was terribly written (though better in the later seasons) but was still ground breaking. For those of us in our mid-30s, it was really kind of a "gay" coming of age show. It was the first real frank depiction of man/man sex on American TV.

So, there have been rumors over the years of a reunion but it likely won't happen. First off, while Showtime owns the rights to the show, they no longer have the licensing rights to QAF which means they can't create new QAF. I believe the rights reverted back to Russell T. Davis who is now working on a reboot of QAF for Bravo. In all honesty, this is the perfect time to revive the show.

It would kind of be neat to see where the characters are now. The story could be Justin returning to Pittsburgh after 20 years due to the death of his mother or father or whomever and go from there. Brian is long passed his 'sell by date' and now is a sorry has been. Michael and Ben are still together. Mel and Lindsay are back from Canada now that marriage is legal in the US.

Remind me: does Brian remain in Pittsburgh (shudder) at the end of the series? I recall moving to NYC was an option.

Brian should have moved to NYC around 40 to cement his career. As a good-looking 50-something professional in NYC, his life would be far richer than had he remained a big fish in a tiny pond, where he would grow bored and boring.

R19 If I remember correctly, Justin gets offered a spot in an MFA program at NYU and Brian urges him to go.

Clunie's new face makes her unrecognizable. Sharon Gless looks great.

Would Clunie's BabyDaddy be involved?

That could change everything?

R19 and R20, in the final season Justin and Brian get engaged. This is a result of Brian bring diagnosed and surviving testicular cancer the season before. It's been years since I've seen it but basically they both realize that they're not being true to themselves or their relationship if they get married. Justin is offered the chance to move to NYC and Brian encourages him to do it. That is how the series ends.

You are leaving a lot our R23

There's a terrorist bombing at the Worlds' Biggest Gay Disco (that Brian conveniently owns) and many people die. He thinks that Justin may be one of them since he can't find him and then realizes that he in fact loves him and finally, to the delight of frauen everywhere, says "I love you" to him and turns into an incurable romantic and proposes. The wedding is planned and then he realizes that If You Love Something Set It Free. If It Comes Back To You, It Is Yours, And If It Flies Away, It Never Was (or whatever the saying is) and insists that 22 year old Justin go to art school in NYC rather than marry a 35 year old ad guy and remain in Pittsburgh wondering if he'd have become a famous artist in NYC.c

Did not really have anything to do with the cancer scare, IIRC

^^He also bought some ridiculous mansion for them to live in too in between the bombing and the letting go. They had a couple of hot sex scenes in the mansion.

...

I think they should do a QAF as R6 described.

Brian would be 50, rich, and handsome: As others in the thread have said, he'd have no problem getting laid. But I honestly think that sometime between 35 and 50 he'd have found a partner. Probably someone equally ambitious and educated (NOT a Michael type), who doesn't want kids and would be interested in living well, traveling often, and having a semi-open relationship with realistic rules.

Michael would still be with Ben, but Ben might be experiencing long-term health problems from his HIV meds and Michael would be as much a caretaker as a husband. Hunter their adopted twink would have taken off long ago: Former teenage prostitutes with HIV don't usually settle down to fulfilling lives.

Melanie and Lindsay would be divorced and sharing custody of their kids. Melanie would be single; Lindsay would have had several relationships, probably at least one of them with a man.

Emmett would have also found a partner: An older rich daddy type like that millionaire he fucked in one of the seasons.

Ted would be dead of OD or suicide: He had too much self-hatred to ever be happy.

Justin would be a successful artist in New York. He has had a series of partners but is still looking for Mr. Right. Occasionally, he has three-ways with Brian and his partner.

And that concludes my QaF fanfic for today.

Gus would be a Trump worshipping Nazi.

I think Brian has opened some sort of store in Upstate New York.

It's weird how much some of you have invested in Brian still being successful.

Robert Gant unfortunately has aged the worst out of them all... And he was by far the hottest one on the show.

He was barely recognizable in his guest appearance on Why Women Kill.

A reboot would only work with a new, young leading cast with the occasional guest appearance of the original cast.

Maybe make it about Gus and his circle of friends. Gus being the anti Brian, his dad, and more like a mousey Michael who is in a will they / won't they / love / hate (fuck buddy?) relationship with a someone who is the new Brian in the group. Like HBO's Girls but with a full on LGBTQ cast. Very diverse (which DLers will hate, of course).

Odds are that someone as ambitious as Brian WOULD still be successful 20 years on. His personal life might be a mess, though.

He'd likely be dating hookers like most old but rich gay men.

R33 Bravo is rebooting QAF with an all new (younger) cast but it's in no way related to the 00-05 American QAF.

If they ever did a revival of the American QAF, I think it would have to be a mix of the older characters with new younger ones. I think it was Peter Paige (but don't quote me) who said a few years ago that basically Showtime no longer has the rights to QAF and that's the reason there will never be a reunion despite there being interest in doing so.

It's too bad they can't do it, because Brian/Melanie's son and Michael/Melanie's daughter would be college-aged Zoomers at this point. Between their friends and the older cast, you'd have a good mix of both age groups. It would be interesting to see the original cast dealing with middle age and the wokeness and gender fluidity of the young generation.

Oops, I meant Brian/Lindsay's son.

Years ago when the show was still on, Robert Gant was interviewed for a gay magazine (either OUT or THE ADVOCATE) and talked about how he has been a part of the circuit scene, so that may help explain why he's lost his looks.

IIRC, Gant is (was?) the boyfriend of Bob Greeenblatt who is both not even remotely Jewish, despite the name, and a very high level TV exec, who is now one of the people running HBO Max, the new mega version of HBO that is launching soon

I don't Gant has lost his looks. He's aged, but he's an attractive 50-something year old man.

I'd like to see the British version come back.

R42 I believe the new Bravo version is based on the British version and not the American one, but won't involve the old actors. It'll be a new cast.

A reboot of the original would be interesting. Oh wait... Cucumber.

Anyone wondering how much fun it would be to mix the younger gen offspring with the older gen original characters...

Should take a look at the abortion that is the New Tales Of The City on Netflix. Just godawful.

And that source material was a whole lot better than QAF.

Just saying.

The Brian cool thing was soooo annoying. Bugged the shit out of me - they never tried to make him realistic just a fantasy of the cool, confident, successful 30-something that doesn’t really exist in real life. Otherwise, the show had potential.

They would bump pussies

[quote] The world's largest gay disco that just happened to be located in Pittsburgh's thriving gay quarter?

The biggest fantasy the show ever pulled off was the one where Pittsburgh had a thriving gay quarter and/or had a fun all night diner open downtown.

The showmakers were clearly using Brian as a fantasy/fetish object. Gale Harold was obviously sick of it by the end of the series, and I don't blame him. If they'd humanized the character rather than making him their own personal sex doll, the show would have been much better for it.

To R49's point, have you tried watching the series recently (it's on the Showtime app and was on Netflix for a bit too.)

The sex scenes are so gratuitous it's comical. They rarely tried to work them into the plot, it was more like cut to soft core porn sequence, then back to actual soap opera story.

I thought it was hot when it was first on and I was young and was reassured to see gay characters (Brian in particular) who were not mincing prisspots.

Yeah, in the later seasons they didn't even pretend to make the sex have anything to do with the plot: It was just another excuse to see Brian naked and fucking.

By contrast, the first sex scene between Brian and Justin was quite explicit but made total sense in terms of plot and character development. But they went to that well far, far too often.

Probably because the first season was a direct lift from the UK series, R51

The two guys who were the showrunners, a gay couple themselves, had a very different sensibility.

Russell T Davies, the originator of the UK series, is also a gay man. So the US showrunners really didn't have a good excuse for what they did to the Brian character (and to the actor who played him).

Bravo? What if Andy Cohen put his paws on it?

....

Gale Harold looks like Nick Offerman's brother now, but that's better than the terrible plastic surgery that Hal Sparks had.

Randy still looks cute.

Randy looks surprisingly the same. Also, the guy who played Ted looks like he always has, except for the gray hair. The actor who played Emmett is unrecognizable.

Didn't mean to imply that their gayness had anything to do with their sensibility R53.

Just noting that they were hacks and Davies wasn't

It sucked the first time around

My sexcapades in my 20s wouldn’t have had much to do with the plot of my life. They were fun little detours from everything else going on.

We are in total agreement about that, R59. The first season of QaF US was the best one, partly due to using plots from the UK version. Also, it didn't help that they fired half the writers (clearly the decent ones) after Season 1, and the show never recovered.

Yes, R61, but that's real life. In narrative, all the details are supposed to matter.

I think regarding the sex, the US version suffered from being on cable so it was always under pressure to justify itself by showing things that wouldn't be allowed on a network.

The UK version never had that pressure because British networks can pretty much show what they want, so sex was only ever used when there was an organic reason for it.

The UK show started big with the sexual content but with each new episode it got less and less sexy and more paint-by-numbers drama.

The UK version was never as laughably awful during its limited run as the US version was at times. They knew exactly when and where to end it.

But I never felt it was as brilliant or compelling as some fans made it out to be. Frankly, it was quite dull at times. And with rare exception (eg, Charlie Hunnnam), the cast was neither charismatic nor attractive.

It was a weird show. I had a friend who worked on it and he said the biggest problem was the showrunners were Boomers who had come of age sexually before AIDS and assumed that urban gay life was still like what they remembered from their 20s, and that just wasn't the case when the show was running.

Never understood why the kept the British slang-title for the American version.

What else would they call it?

"Queerer than a Three-Dollar Bill"?

"Gayer than Christmas"?

"Queer Ass Folk"

[quote] And with rare exception (eg, Charlie Hunnnam), the cast was neither charismatic nor attractive.

IMO that was the whole point of both shows. Neither took place in super mega big gay cities. The British one took place in Manchester and the US one was supposed to be in Pittsburgh (obvs. filmed in Canada). Pedestrian looking guys thinking they are hot shit, because they happen to live in half way decent sized cities.

Justin comes home from New York broken and unsuccessful and takes refuge with Brian again. Mike and Lindsay resent him as much as ever.

R64 Some of the writers and cast have commented that Showtime pushed for sex scene in every episode. I think in the early run of the show this worked better because it matched the story lines, but in the later years it totally seems forced and just dropped in.

As for the writing, like most shows, the first season of the show was filled with politics in the writers room. Ron Cowen & Daniel Lipman basically want a writer's credit for virtually every episode and many of the original writers fought against that. Even if Cowen & Lipman did do re-writes (which is very common in TV writers rooms) they could only claim credit if 50% of the script was written by them. After the first season, most of the writers were fired and Cowen & Lipman were credited for every single episode from season 2 along side the writer who actually wrote the script.

This is one of the major reasons of the decline in quality between seasons 1 and 2. Season 2 is by far the worst season of the show. I actually think seasons 4 and 5 are fairly strong, but you could tell by then the writers were running out of ideas. One thing about the show that always bugged me was the repetitive story lines. I mean how many times did Lindsey and Mel's relationship breakdown? How many times did Ted have some kind of hardship etc. etc.

On the other hand, DL is always complaining that there are not enough sex scenes between gay characters in movies and on tv.

An interesting look back at QAF. It is true that there really hasn't been many gay-centric shows in the intervening years.

Never watched it.

I enjoyed Queer As Folk for what it was - Melrose Place for gay people, nothing more nothing less. Some people just read way too much into it.

R75 Good article. He rightly points out that despite QAF's big rating success (it was the show that but Showtime on the map), 20 years later there have only has been one major gay-centeric TV series (Looking) that can compare. Looking, IMO, was far better written than QAF.

Yeah - I was disappointed Looking was cancelled so quickly. I really liked the updated view of gay life. Good writing and characters. A shame.

they could do a reunion, but they'd have to bring on a slew of younger people, age up Gus, or maybe after all these years he wouldn't need aging.

I liked the issues the first season of QAF touched upon.

It was held up as a show that needed to be everything to every gay person, which of course, no show can do.

Which is why it would be interesting if tptb made Grace and Frankie canon in its' last two seasons.