Queer TV series are becoming more and more common, and keeping track of all the new releases is no longer easy. So we’ve put together several recently released projects that caught our attention — from romantic dramas to thrillers and crime comedies.
Proud
A rare Polish queer series to make it into our selections. Filip works as a model, spends a lot of time partying, has casual relationships, and shows little interest in growing up. Everything changes after his sister dies, leaving him responsible for her young daughter, Tosia.
On the one hand, this is an intimate story about a man who is completely unprepared for responsibility and does not always behave well. On the other, his desire to become a family for his niece runs up against anti-gay prejudice and the realities of modern Poland.
The Missing Piece
After an accident, Shen Mo loses his memory and mistakes Ji Mingxuan, the man who rescued him, for his lover. Ji Mingxuan does not rush to correct the misunderstanding, and the two men end up spending the next six months together. But when Shen Mo’s old memories return, it is precisely those six months that disappear from his memory.
The attempt to recover the lost intimacy becomes a story about whether it is even possible to recreate a relationship with someone who once loved you.
Half Man
Following the success of Baby Reindeer, Richard Gadd once again explores themes of male vulnerability, shame, and violence, but this time he tells a completely fictional story. At the center are Niall and Ruben, who grew up almost like brothers after their mothers began living together. Thirty years later, Ruben unexpectedly appears at Niall’s wedding, after which the series gradually returns to their shared past and reveals how attachment, fear, sexual attraction, and the struggle for power became intertwined between them in one painful knot.
A warning right away: this is one of the heaviest series in our selection. It contains a great deal of violence, psychologically difficult scenes, and an extremely dark view of male trauma — something critics have also highlighted.
Juliet & Juliet
This Thai series takes the basic structure of Romeo and Juliet and gives both leading roles to girls. Tokyo and Blue come from two feuding families and meet at school, where their relationship is far from perfect at first. But gradually, hostility gives way to feelings, and the two young women must also deal with the family conflict they inherited.
If you enjoy high-drama series and stories built around the idea of “love against all odds,” but want something more intense than the usual office or university romance, this may be the series for you!
The Shards
Los Angeles in the early 1980s. Wealthy high school students, drugs, sex, expensive cars, and a serial killer hunting teenagers. At the center of the story is a young Bret Easton Ellis, an aspiring writer who dates a girl but secretly sleeps with men. When a mysterious and handsome new student named Robert Mallory arrives at school, Bret becomes increasingly convinced that the newcomer may be connected to a series of murders.
Ryan Murphy has turned the semi-autobiographical novel into a nine-episode erotic thriller about desire, paranoia, and life behind a carefully constructed facade.
Sterling Point
Seventeen-year-old Annie discovers that she and her brother have inherited a small island in Canada’s Muskoka region from a grandfather they barely knew. The trip is supposed to provide answers about their family’s past…
Sterling Point looks almost like a classic coming-of-age drama: a remote island, summer, attractive teenagers, family secrets, and characters who fall for people they probably shouldn’t. The only difference is that the relationships between the characters are noticeably more contemporary.
The series is worth watching if you miss big teenage dramas but want queer characters to be treated as a natural part of the story rather than as an obligatory reason to have a separate conversation about acceptance and tolerance.
Summertime
Yoo Uno and Cha Dohyeon have known each other almost their entire lives and have long considered each other something like family. But their final summer of high school disrupts their familiar routine. A new student joins their class, Uno quickly becomes close to him, and Dohyeon suddenly realizes that his jealousy toward his best friend is anything but platonic.
This is a fairly classic “friends to lovers” story that does not try to be anything more. A good choice if you enjoy BL series and are currently looking for romance without an overly complicated plot.
Tip Toe
Leo has lived next door to Clive in Manchester for fifteen years. Leo is a bright, outgoing man who owns a bar in the famous Gay Village. Clive, by contrast, is a withdrawn electrician who increasingly feels like an outsider and a “loser” in a changing world. What remained ordinary neighborly coexistence for years gradually turns into hostility: Clive becomes radicalized, and Leo becomes the main target of his growing anger.
The series was written by Russell T Davies, creator of Queer as Folk and It’s a Sin, but instead of another historical queer drama, he has created a five-part thriller dealing with highly relevant contemporary issues. It is a story about how everyday resentment, a sense of being left behind, and talk about how “things have gone too far” can gradually turn into a real threat to specific people.
Big Mistakes
A brother and sister with absolutely no preparation for a life of crime accidentally find themselves owing dangerous people money and begin carrying out jobs for them. It could have been yet another comedy about incompetent gangsters if it weren’t for the characters themselves.
Nicky, played by Dan Levy, works as a pastor and is openly gay, but he hides his actual relationship with his boyfriend from his congregation: officially, the church accepts his sexuality as long as it remains something abstract. His habit of being cautious and accommodating toward others fits perfectly with the chaos he is pulled into by his much more impulsive sister, Morgan.
DANG!
Andrew, Eunice, and Ruthie have been adults for quite some time, but each of them continues, in their own way, to pretend that everything is fine. One struggles with anxiety and moves from one casual sexual encounter to another, another makes money through absurd online side hustles, while the third has built the image of a perfect career woman — an image that suddenly begins to fall apart.
Queerness plays a significant role in the series as well. Andrew is openly gay, and through his storyline the series explores dating, sex, relationships, and the experience of growing up in a religious environment.