Queer as Art, BBC Two review – showbusiness and the gay revolution…
Part of the BBC’s Gay Britannia season, here was a programme fulfilling what it said on the tin: prominent LGBTQ (when will all these expanding acronyms cease to confuse us all) figures narrating, examining, discussing, analysing, letting it all hang out about LGBTQ folk and the arts during the past half-century.
The usual suspects were interviewed, from Maggi Hambling – her smoking more shocking than anything else on the programme – to Stephen Fry, Sandy Toksvig and David Hockney, although there was no Alan Bennett or Grayson Perry.
In the 1960s before the act that partially decriminalised homosexuality, evidently the only partly safe places were the theatre, the civil service (not examined here at all) and… hairdressing. Lesbianism was never illegal, but most of the running into the open, we were reminded, has been overwhelmingly male. Historically lesbians weren’t closeted but almost totally hidden, meaning no role models were available, but Val McDermid touchingly told us how her pin-up was Dusty Springfield.
