The 25 Best TV Shows Of 2018 With LGBT Women Characters
‘Tis the season for various media outlets to reveal their list of the 10-40 Best TV Shows of the year, and this year we decided to get in on that. With a caveat, of course — to us, no matter how critically acclaimed any given show is, we cannot personally crown it “the best” unless our specific interests (read: queer women) are included within it. I’m sorry that’s just who and how we are!
To prepare for this undertaking, I looked at 18 Best TV of 2018 lists across mainstream media, both high-brow and middle-brow: The Decider, The New York Times, Paste, Vulture, Vanity Fair, The Guardian, Entertainment Weekly, USA Today, The New Yorker, TV Guide, AFI, Complex, The AV Club, Verge, The AP, Variety, Slate, The Daily Beast and The Atlantic. On the list below, you’ll see in parentheses a number: that number represents the number of other Best-Of lists the show appeared on.
Last year I documented what felt like — finally— a shift wherein regular and recurring queer women characters were just as likely to show up at the forefront of prestige television as they were in our previous homes of “soapy teen dramas,” sci-fi/supernatural epics and very small parts in aforementioned prestige television. This year that trend has continued mightily. Three shows that turned up on pretty much every Best-Of list — The Good Place, Killing Eve and Pose — had queer or trans leads. Frequent inclusions on those Best-Of Lists that did not include queer women were exactly what you’d expect: The Americans, Homecoming, Atlanta, Better Call Saul, Lodge 49, Barry, Bojack Horseman (which did have one lesbian-themed episode but that didn’t feel like enough to warrant inclusion on this list, I’m sure you will @ me re: this) and Gianni Versace: American Crime Story. Most baffling to us all was that Lifetime’s You showed up on SEVEN Best-Of Lists, despite being insufferable and killing its only queer woman character. It’s not on this list.
This list is not, then, our favorite shows of the year, or the shows that brought us the most joy or the best representation. We’re doing a lot of lists this year about teevee, and most of them are our Favorites, not “The Best.” This list are the shows that have regular or recurring queer women characters and that I personally believe were, objectively, the best. The opinions of other critics weighed heavily into these rankings, and only in a few cases did I pick a show that wasn’t on any other Best-Of lists.
I look forward to witnessing your disagreements and agreements in the comments! Also I know there’s 27 shows here but 25 seemed like a better headline.
28. Marvel’s Runaways Seasons One & Two (0)
“Marvel’s Runaways” Hasn’t Achieved Its Full Gay Potential Yet, but It’s Already a Thrilling Ride
The timing couldn’t be better for this lovely comic book adaptation about a group of fierce, supernaturally talented teenagers challenging the abhorrent compromises their parents made, supposedly in their best interest, for a “better world,” at the expense of, you know — human lives, wealth inequality, and our planet. Plus, Virginia Gardner literally shines as Karolina Dean, a human-alien hybrid initially hiding her superpowers and her lesbianism ’til coming out near the end of Season One. Her revelation is refreshingly well received by her crush, cynical goth Nico Minoru, in what feels like a fairly honest depiction of Generation Y’s alleged tendency towards nonchalant sexual fluidity. Season Two sees the lesbian couple trying to make it work amid pretty challenging circumstances. Despite an enormous ensemble — six children and ten parents for each — Runaways has mostly succeeded in making each of them count. At times it fumbles, having bit off more than it can chew thematically and w/r/t sheer population, but it still manages to combine the easy joy of a teen drama with the satisfying anxiety of suspenseful sci-fi. — Riese Bernard
27. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel Season Two (7)
Undoubtedly the most cheerful show on the list and a bona-fide critical darling, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is hawkishly agreeable, floating through its second season on unmistakable charm, its trademark breakneck quip-laden dialogue, and a generous budget devoted to picturesque sets and locations that leave no affluent late-’50s stone unturned. Then there’s Mrs. Maisel herself, a plucky heroine who occasionally does wrong but when she does, it’s always very cute, and often laugh-out-loud funny. It’s frustrating that Susie’s lesbianism remains bafflingly unspoken, especially when Mrs. Maisel’s primary flaw continues to be its chronically low stakes, like a cake inside another cake inside another cake slathered in buttercream frosting. I do love cake, though! Regardless — Susie deserves a sexuality. I hope in Season Three she finally gets it. — Riese Bernard
26. Sally4Ever Season One (2)
HBO’s “Sally4Ever” Is Hilarious, Horrifying, Tries to Make Lesbian Toeing Happen
Earning points for sheer pugnacity, Sally4Ever, described by The Guardian as “a lurid lesbian sitcom,” is a disgusting, often offensive and downright bizarre comedy about an absurdly passive middle-aged woman, Sally, who leaves her droll underachieving partner for a wildly manipulative narcissistic lesbian musician / actress she first sees on the Underground. Julie Davis’s Emma is a madcap creation only Julie Davis’s mind could’ve created. Sally4Ever is one of four reminders on this list that you can always rely on British television to wallow in discomfort and failure in a way optimistic American TV is rarely willing to do. — Riese Bernard
25. Legends of Tomorrow Seasons Three & Four (2)
How “Legends of Tomorrow” Became One of the Best Queer Shows on TV
Legends of Tomorrow is one of the weirdest shows on television. With everything from Julius Caesar on the loose in Aruba to a stuffed animal worshipped as a god of war, you truly never know what’s going to happen next. On paper, it seems like the writers play mad libs with storylines, picking random nouns and locations out of hats and running with it. The most dramatic lines of dialogue are, simply put, absurd. But in 2018 this goofy-ass show has blossomed into something truly spectacular, as bisexual badass Sara Lance became, in the words of Zari, “not just the captain of the ship, but its soul.” It was still everything we love about the show – the misfit camaraderie, the wacky storylines, the outfits, the heart – but turned up to eleven. Sara also got her first post-Arrow longterm relationship with another woman. Their love story was fraught, sweet, sexy, complicated — and oh so rewarding. Best of all, it’s still going strong. — Valerie Anne
24. Everything Sucks! Season One (1)
Everything Sucks! is a Bangin’ TV Show With a Sweet Lesbian Lead
Sure, everything sucks, but something that specifically sucks is that this show only got one tiny season to breathe. Sweet and nostalgic, Everything Sucks! made the noteworthy choice of placing a lesbian character front and center of a tender coming-of-age dramedy set in Boring, Oregon. Amid pitch-perfect references to Frutopia, “Wonderwall” and the Columbia House Music Club, we have two girls on separate journeys towards queer revelations (and each other) and in this story, the pre-teen boys in their crew aren’t the main event. Considering all that, I suppose, perhaps it’s not so surprising it got cancelled.— Riese Bernard
23. Forever Season One (3)
Maya Rudolph’s Forever is Finally Here and Quietly Queer
Every critic on earth adored Forever, partly because of the show’s unique and brilliantly executed concept, but mostly because of Maya Rudolph’s stunning and triumphant return to TV. What made Forever even rarer than those two things was the central conflict for Rudolph’s character, June, who experienced a middle-aged queer awakening at the hands of an enigmatic, furious, and sometimes even unlikable(!!) Kase, played by Catherine Keener. It does seem like maybe some vital character development for Kase was left on the cutting room floor in an effort to make sure the audience didn’t root too hard for her relationship with June — but what remained was still breathtaking and frankly revolutionary. — Heather Hogan
22. Counterpart Season One (3)
After years of lurking in the Showtime/HBO shadows, Starz has emerged over the past few years to, intentionally or not, feature queer women characters in nearly all of their original programming. And what original programming it has been! A lot of the well-deserved praise for this taut, suspenseful, dystopian spy thriller has gone to J.K. Simmons for his riveting performance as two versions of the same man, one in each of the show’s two parallel worlds. But the reason I tuned in was for one of the year’s few masculine-of-center lesbian regulars: Baldwin, a trained assassin never given the chance to develop a true emotional life or any dreams of her own, a fact laid bare when she’s forced to watch her counterpart, an accomplished classical violinist, die in an alternate dimension. She struggles with her sexual and emotional connection to a sleeper agent and an unexpected romance with a waitress, as brooding butches are wont to do, but we never struggle with our affection for this unique point of connection in a really good story.— Riese Bernard
21. Adventure Time Season 10 (1)
Princess Bubblegum and Marceline Smooch On-Screen, Live Happily Ever After in the “Adventure Time” Series Finale
Adventure Time is easily the most influential show in Cartoon Network’s history; echoes of its style and themes reverberate far beyond kids TV. And really Adventure Time never was kids TV. Yeah, it was animated and as silly as bing bong ping pong. But as it evolved, it became as philosophical weighty and psychologically curious as Battlestar Galactica. Fans of Princess Bubblegum and Marceline enjoyed growing canonical support of their favorite couple over the seasons, both on-screen and in spin-off comic books — but they’d never actually confirmed their relationship physically until the series finale when Bonnie got womped in the dome piece and almost croaked and Marceline rushed to her and caressed her and professed her love and they smooched right on the mouths. — Heather Hogan
20. The Handmaid’s Tale Season Two (4)
“The Handmaid’s Tale” Season Two Gets Even Darker, Queerer, Curiouser and Curiouser
Season Two of Handmaid’s Tale was darker than Season One, which’s saying a lot. I mean we opened with a fake-out mass-hanging and before long Offred was basically slicing off a chunk of her own ear, then staring at the camera while we watched her bleed. And there would be so much more blood where that came from! But damn, the artistry of this brutal show and its magnificent cast, capable of communicating entire worlds without a single spoken line. The season’s most unspoken message, though, was this: pay attention. Look up. Don’t wait for them to come for you. Clea Duvall and Cherry Jones graced us with winning cameos and lesbian characters Moira (Samira Wiley) and Emily (Alexis Bledel) took greater prominence. So did Gilead’s persecution of lesbians in a specific dystopia designed by religious fundamentalists who are obsessed with traditional gender roles and able to rationalize their actions in the wake of a fertility crisis. It’s not a pleasant world to witness, yet it remains a seductive watch. Every moment of dark humor is hard-won, like, I suppose, freedom itself.— Riese Bernard
19. The End of the F*cking World Season One (5)
I Demand a Lesbian Cop-Show Spin-off of The End of the F*cking World
Sure, we could watch fresh-faced teen dreams fall in love in the lemon-scented hallways of suburban California high schools, or we could watch … whatever this was? A 17-year-old self-diagnosed psychopath who loves knives goes on a traveling caper with the only girl in town who’s sad, alienated and nihilistic enough to wanna run away with him. Hot on their tail are two lesbian detectives who had a thing once and definitely deserve their own show. — Riese Bernard
18. Dear White People Season Two (4)
In this current television landscape, binges come and go. A television show drops on streaming, you watch it, maybe even obsess for a spell, and then it fades to the recesses of your memory to make room for whatever trendy new show is coming next. In those dips and waves, sometimes something really special falls through the cracks. I say that because there’s a chance that you didn’t watch Dear White People last year and that’s a mistake.
The first season of Dear White People was regrettably uneven, particularly in regards to its lesbian representation, but the second season aired this year and came back stronger, more focused, and razor-sharp! It’s a stylized and poignant exploration of being a black student at a predominantly white university that is as smart (if not smarter) than almost any other comedy I watched last year. The weekend of its drop, I finished all 13 episodes in two days. The next weekend, I watched it again. I couldn’t shake how insightful it was, how bright, how one-of-a-kind. You can watch the second season with no knowledge of the first and follow along easily. As a bonus, it comes with the bittersweet gift of two smaller, but significantly better executed black lesbian plots. One of those plots stars Lena Waithe. It also features Tessa Thompson as a parodied take on a Stacey Dash’s “black republican television pundit” figure. Her character plays out over a series of cameos, but as far as I’m concerned her final scene is worth the entire season by itself. — Carmen Phillips
17. Steven Universe Season Five (2)
“Steven Universe” Makes History, Mends Hearts in a Perfect Lesbian Wedding Episode
Steven Universe continues to explore more adult themes more fully than nearly every non-animated show on TV: family, grief, depression, commitment, betrayal, duplicitousness, forgiveness, puberty, gender, gender presentation, sexuality — and it does so in a way that’s warm and engaging and funny and, most of all, hopeful. This season, Rebecca Sugar’s beloved non-binary lesbian gems, Ruby and Sapphire, broke more ground by becoming the first same-sex couple to get married on all-ages TV. Their wedding featured masc gems in dresses, femme gems in tuxes, kisses right on the mouth, and swoon-worthy proclamations of eternal love. Also, of course, ass-kicking. Steven Universe remains one of the best shows on television, full stop. — Heather Hogan
16. Black Lightning Seasons One & Two (0)
Recaps of Season One & Two of Black Lightning
The CW has delivered a very entertaining batch of fresh-faced white superheroes determined to battle off some wacky Big Bads, but Black Lightning really elevates the genre and takes notable risks. The story is rooted halfway in this world, too, spotlighting a family wrought together over love and a deep commitment to their community and social justice, while divided on how best to manifest that commitment. Annissa Pierce, aka Thunder, became network television’s first out lesbian superhero when she debuted in early 2018. “I’ve said before that bullet proof black people is my favorite superhero trope,” Carmen wrote in a Season One recap, “but there is also something so sweet about a television lesbian who can’t be shot.” We hope to see more in future episodes of her girlfriend Grace, played by Chantal Thuy. Don’t sleep on Black Lightning. Wherever it’s going, you’ll want to be on board.— Riese Bernard
15. The Bisexual Season One (2)
Hulu’s “The Bisexual” Is Here to Make Every Queer a Little Uncomfortable
This has been such a great year for queer weirdos with their fingers acutely upon their own pulses. In between impeccable L Word references and fetching fashion choices, The Bisexual is an uncompromising journey of sexual discovery, jump-started when Leila breaks up with her much older girlfriend (and business partner) Sadie. Akhvan’s world feels undeniably authentic — she points out that “it’s the only show on TV where you can watch two Middle Eastern women in a car, talking, taking up the screen with their different bodies and different ethnicities.” Fumbling and unafraid of its own potential, The Bisexual also portrays a multi-generational, diverse network of queer and often gender-non-conforming women in London’s East End in all its messy, self-reflexive glory. — Riese Bernard
13. The Good Fight Season Two (9)
The Good Fight lives in that very special sweet spot that I like to call organized chaos, almost ballet-like in its sweeping rhythm. It is very much a playground for Christine Baranski and Cush Jumbo to do their impeccable work. But it also, better than any other show, captures the collective meltdown that has become a ceaseless hum in Tr*mp’s America. It’s sharp, and it’s dark, and it’s still funny and fun, with a very women-driven, diverse cast. And one of its central lawyers, Maia Rindell (Rose Leslie), also happens to be a petite lesbian mired in staggering lesbian drama, and by lesbian drama I mean her girlfriend literally testifies against her in a massive court case that Maia’s parents have her swept up in! Also, in season two we learn that Maia was in love with her tennis instructor as a closeted baby gay, and I have never felt more Seen. — Kayla Kumari
12. Harlots Season Two (0)
Harlots Season Two Is Here, Queer and Transcendent
Harlots might be the year’s most underrated show (Seriously, how does this show earn a nearly perfect score on Rotten Tomatoes but not make it onto anybody’s Best Shows Of the Year list? I endeavor to suggest that the reason is Men). I declared Harlots the most accurate portrayal of indoor-market sex work ever represented onscreen in Season One — surprisingly more resonant to me as a former sex worker than any contemporary portrayals — and its extra queering in Season Two made it moreso and then some. If Season One was about sex work, Season Two is about the reality that what’s done to sex workers is inextricable from what’s done to all women — the lessons about power, violence, solidarity and struggle in stories about sex work are ones that the larger conversation about gender ignores at its peril. — Riese Bernard
11. High Maintenance Season Two (6)
In between High Maintenance‘s first and second season, a lot happened for husband-and-wife co-creators Ben Sinclair and Katja Blichfeld — including Katja coming out as gay, thus ending their marriage. Although the split hadn’t been finalized at the time, Season One ended with the reveal that Sinclair’s “The Guy” marijuana-delivery character lived down the hallway from his ex-wife, who’d left him for another woman. Its Season Two, then, is a long time coming and imbued with a rapturous affection for contemporary queer culture. The characters calling upon “The Guy” negotiate languid lesbian sexual dynamics, LGBT-affirming churches, sexually fluid teens and anti-Trump feminist gatherings attended by well-intentioned, hysterical liberals. Particularly touching was a bittersweet episode that saw “The Guy” visited in the hospital by aforementioned now-lesbian ex-wife. But honestly, with few exceptions every story in this scene is like a nice hybrid edible that makes you giggle, relax, and occasionally feel profound.— Riese Bernard
10. Vida Season One (2)
“Vida” Review: Starz’s New Latinx Drama Is Sexy, Soulful and Super Queer
Tragically overlooked by mainstream critics, one of 2018’s most innovatory offerings sees emotionally estranged sisters, bisexual attorney Emma (Michel Prada) and Lyn (Melissa Barrera), reuniting in their home of Boyle Heights after the death of their mother who, it turns out, was in fact dating her butch lesbian “roommate,” Eddy. Showrunner Tanya Saracho’s writing team is entirely Latinx and mostly queer, and they deftly address the complications of “gente-fication” and the joys of living breathing loving community with all the nuance and authenticity it requires. But perhaps most notable for all of us here was the graphic butch/femme sex scene that opened Episode Three. “It isn’t just about the hot sex — though the sex is very hot — it’s about creating spaces where Latinx queer bodies can feel ownership,” wrote Carmen in her recap. “It’s tearing down shame. It’s about saying that our love, our sex, our sticky sweat is valid.”— Riese Bernard
9. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Seasons 4 & 5 (4)
“Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” Is Singing Our Song: Valencia Has a Girlfriend!
Maybe we should’ve seen it coming — after all, soon after we meet Valencia for the first time, she’s kissing Rebecca on the dance floor and lamenting the fact that everyone wants to have sex with her — but it wasn’t until Valencia met Beth that we got to see her bisexuality as something other than comedic fodder. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend has always been a queer-friendly show but with Valencia and Beth, it finally put lady-loving ladies on centerstage. Valencia’s bisexuality was the pitch perfect end to a show-long character arc: she’s evolved from the vain yoga instructor who couldn’t build meaning relationships with women to loving, working and living with one.
The Golden Globe-winning series is currently in its fourth and final season and Valencia and Beth are still together, happy and, in an unusual twist for Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, relatively normal (unless you count the $8000 they pay in rent for their new closet size NYC apartment). We feared that the couple’s recent relocation meant that we wouldn’t get to see as much of them but the show’s found a way to bridge the distance between West Covina and New York. Hopefully, Valencia’s recent return for “the rest of the series of holidays” means we’ll finally get that lesbian loving musical number we’ve all been craving. — Natalie Duggins
8. Jane the Virgin Season Four (4)
While Jane the Virgin has been rightly critically acclaimed since day one and praised for its revolutionary diversity, it’s always had a complicated relationship with its queer characters. Luisa started off strong but was ultimately relegated to a one-dimensional punchline before essentially disappearing, and Rose was never really fully formed. This year, though, the writers picked up on the long-running fan theory that Petra is bisexual and agreed. Unlike Luisa, Petra actually started out as a caricature and became more layered and complicated as the show went on. Her coming out journey was essentially realizing she’s into women because her chemistry with Jane Ramos spawned a sex dream into her subconscious — and then just going for it. The self-revelation, the exploration, even the way she told Jane and Rafael about it was so sweet and sexy and prickly and Petra. Jane the Virgin has gotten better every year, and the surprise of Petra and JR’s storyline was one of the reasons season four was its best ever. — Heather Hogan
7. The Haunting of Hill House Season One (4)
Netflix’s New “Haunting of Hill House” Gave Us a Lesbian Who Lives, Took Our Whole Weekend
The Haunting of Hill House had a challenge ahead of it with adapting its queer storyline; the original text had one of pop culture’s first recognizably lesbian characters, but preserving her “authentically” would mean falling far short of today’s expectations for representation, as in 2018 we look for more to signify lesbianism than “wears pants” and “is unmarried.” So Haunting gave us Theo, a lesbian character whose sexuality isn’t her whole storyline, but does tie into it; who goes through some wild and traumatizing stuff, but on a level that’s comparable with the also very wild and traumatizing stuff that her straight siblings go through. And in a show where romantic relationships are rocky at best, Theo does manage to both survive and get the girl. —Rachel Kincaid
6. Brooklyn 99 Season Five (6)
As evidenced by our very own Gay Emmys, this year was a very good year for Stephanie Beatriz and her character Rosa Diaz, who came out as bisexual — like, actually said the word! — on this season of Brooklyn Nine-Nine. The show itself had a good year, too, almost annoying in how persistently it outdoes itself year after year with its annual, always excellent Halloween episode. The Backstreet Boys lineup might go down as one of the greatest comedy cold opens of all time (up there with The Office’s “Fire Drill”). And even though we’re now five seasons into the series, that doesn’t mean the writers are just coasting by on humor that relies on how well we know all of these characters. It still regularly serves up new, emotional character arcs that peel back the layers to this lovable squad, as with Rosa’s personal life developments. Above all else, the show celebrates earnestness and friendship in a really lovely way that proves you don’t have to be mean or cynical to be really fucking funny. — Kayla Kumari
5. One Day at a Time Season Two (6)
“One Day at a Time” Brings Even More Heart and Humor and Gayness to Season 2
There’s an easy reason that One Day at a Time shows up on so many critics’ “End of the Year” Best Lists. It’s quite simply that damn good. One Day at a Time is the most generous, compassionate, loving family sitcom on television. It’s also not afraid to have frank, sometimes dark discussions – PTSD, depression, the fragility of age, the perils of being a young queer teen, the financial struggles of being a working class family in the 21st century. It’s all on the table.
As I wrote in my Season Two review, some of the show’s brilliance comes from leaning into its multi-cam sitcom roots. One Day at a Time uses an old school format, and they are proud of it. They leverage the intimacy and familiarity of the genre to their advantage, luring their audience into cutting edge and weighty conversations from the comfort of the Alvarez’s living room. It’s a stand-out in a class of stand-outs and I would put it against any other comedy on television. In fact, I’ll go further. The fact that One Day at a Time has now gone two years without any acting or writing Emmy nominations is one of the most shaming indictments of the white, male majority of the Television Academy that we have right now. Yes, it’s just that damn good. — Carmen Phillips
4. Pose Season One (13)
“Pose” Is Full of Trans Joy, Resistance, and Love
This show just flatly rejected the idea that the best way to tell our stories is slowly, character-by-character, putting one white cisnormative queer in one show and then another show until we somehow achieve critical mass. The problem with that has often been that that’s not how we live — we’re not out here one by one, lone queers in schools/towns/families composed entirely by normals. Enter Pose: a show written by and for trans women of color, set in an era when the only thing louder than the daily trauma of oppression and omnipresent fear of HIV/AIDS were the LOOKS, and all the beautiful ways a body can move to express itself. Pose radiates with a glittery, gorgeous aesthetic and complicated characters. Trans bodies are so often portrayed as somehow tragic or compromised, and Pose — in addition to being a story about real human lives, love, friendship, and “chosen family” — is about the triumph of the body, its ability to mean as much to the world as it does to itself. — Riese Bernard
3. G.L.O.W. Season Two (11)
G.L.O.W. Season Two Doubles the lesbians, Doubles the Fun
After a first season that bafflingly pursued outlandish homoeroticism yet was seemingly void of homosexuals, Season Two introduced a Latina lesbian fighter and pulled Arthie off the bench for a romantic awakening. G.L.O.W., based on the real-life Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling, was a delightful mid-summer ride that took a more decidedly feminist bent as the Gorgeous Ladies explored how to advocate for, instead of against, each other, in an industry hell-bent on exploiting women for male fortune. Still, with its electrifying outfits, ostentatious costume drama and carefully-calibrated balance of comedy and drama, it only failed at one thing: an ensemble this dynamic needs longer episodes or a longer season, or both. — Riese Bernard
2. The Good Place Season 3 (12)
The Good Place, like The Office and 30 Rock before it (although I’m, admittedly, not a 30 Rock fan), has accomplished nothing short of a complete re-imagination of what the half-hour network comedy can be. It’s got everything: prestige sci-fi level world-building, cartoonish aesthetics, highbrow esoteric wit, running gags and plenty of ‘ships. Its premise, writes Sam Anderson in The New York Times, “is absurdly high concept. It sounds less like the basis of a prime-time sitcom than an experimental puppet show conducted, without a permit, on the woodsy edge of a large public park.” And yet it works. And in Season Three, The Good Place amped up Eleanor’s bisexuality and Janet’s particular take on non-binary, and we are so pleased, because that means we can put what will undoubtedly be one of the most legendary television programs of all time on lists like this one. — Riese Bernard
1. Killing Eve Season One (17)
Killing Eve is Your New Queer Obsession
Crescendoing, relentless, all-consuming obsession fuels the narrative of Killing Eve, Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s sexy, smart, distinctly feminine action thriller starring Sandra Oh and Jodie Comer as the toxic spy-assassin duo who can’t stop thinking about each other. Watching Killing Eve feels exactly like that: seering obsession. This category was stacked with great, complex dramas, but there’s something just purely intoxicating about Killing Eve that sets it apart. Though it’s the phrase most often used to describe Eve and Villanelle’s dynamic, “cat-and-mouse” hardly covers what Oh and Comer bring to these characters or what’s even on the page. It’s never quite clear whether they want to murder each other or make out. Hunting each other, longing for each other, Eve and Villanelle might be one of the most complex queer relationships on television. But beyond that dripping subtext, it’s just a very good thriller with compelling twists and turns and sharp edges that refuse to be dulled. — Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya
Autostraddle’s Favorite and Least Favorite Lesbian, Bisexual and Trans TV Characters of 2018
This has been an unbelievable year of representation for lesbian, bisexual, queer, and trans women on television. Riese broke down GLAAD’s findings just a few weeks ago, but the bottom line is: there are more of us than ever before, on more kinds of shows than ever before, and there are more ways to watch us than ever before, and there are more queer people of color to watch than ever before. In fact, as Riese pointed out, “for the first time ever, LGBTQ characters of color (50%) outpace white (49%) characters! Just barely but still!” All of those things are evident in our TV Team’s annual list of our favorite and least favorite characters. There were so many really good LGBTQ characters on TV in 2018 that there were only a small handful of shows that we all watched (Jane the Virgin, Pose, One Day at a Time, The Bold Type, and Black Lightning.) For the first time ever on this list, you can actually see the personalities of our writers shining through in the things they chose to watch and how they chose to write about them because we weren’t all forced to watch and argue about visibility on the same six shows. Below are our choices; we’d love to hear yours!
None of these write-ups are the Official Position of Autostraddle on any of these shows or characters; they are the individual opinions of our TV writers.
FAVORITE
Riese, Editor-in-Chief
Nancy Birch, Harlots
Nancy Birch pinged from the jump, but in Harlots’ second season, she finally rang the bell and said out loud that she was queer, and specifically that she was in love with Margaret Wells. Maybe she always had been. Nancy — a dominatrix who’d do anything for the women she loves — sort of dresses like a low-rent pirate, and always looks vaguely hungover or that she did her makeup and then slept on it. She’s like an old-fashioned hyper-aggressive Mommi, you know? I want her to like, punish me.
Villanelle, Killing Eve
Wow, why are all of my favorite characters this year basically women I want to have aggressive sex with? I’m not sure. Anyway, Villanelle is a psychopath serial killer. You know the scene where she’s eating chicken pot pie leftovers out of the container and she’s got that long winter underwear shirt on and the shirt is on top of another shirt and her elbows are on the table and she’s eating like a medieval man? Wow, right? Anyhow, Villanelle is everything we don’t want lesbian characters to be (besides dead) (and yes, I know that some people read her as bisexual and I think that’s valid and perhaps even correct, I just read her differently and I think that’s okay don’t @ me) and yet she is so fucking weird that she won my heart. I can’t wait for season two of this very bizarre show.
Leila, The Bisexual
Ah yes, and here we have yet another slightly unstable, sexually creative, broad-shouldered woman. This show was wholly original and brutally honest and felt really fucking real. A lot of shows were like that this year — tangibly authentic because they were written by people who understood deeply the stories they were telling. Akhvan has been called “the bisexual Lena Dunham” and although it’s safe to say Lena Dunham usually sucks (although I should admit AGAIN DON’T @ ME that I did enjoy the HBO series Girls), I get the concept behind it — Leila is a little destructive and sloppy, looking for love in all the wrong places, often shooting herself in the foot. At the same time [unlike any of the girls on Girls], she is somebody I feel deep affection for. I understand why she’s doing what she’s doing, and listen, I support her journey. Plus, she is very tall and hot.
Valerie Anne, Staff Writer
Waverly Earp, Wynonna Earp
Waverly Earp continues to be such a lovely, bright spot on TV for me this year. Nicole was a strong contender for this favorite list, being a loving girlfriend, a badass sheriff and a loyal friend to the Earp girls, but the Jolene episode really cemented Waverly as the one who owns my whole soul. I’ve always identified with Waverly in some ways, and aspired to be more like her in others, so I’m obviously biased, but I think she had a really strong season. She traveled the journey of having and almost losing hope, and learning things about yourself, some that hurt and some that make you stronger. And I mean she was revealed to be a LITERAL angel. A literal queer angel born of a creature from actual heaven. She’s the light I really needed in this dark, dark year.
Sara Lance, Legends of Tomorrow
Sara Lance, and Legends as a whole, delights and surprises me week after week. It just keeps getting stronger and funnier and weirder in the best ways. And seeing Sara in a semi-domestic relationship with Ava, giving other people the same advice she needed two years ago – it’s been truly a wonder to behold. The show just keeps leaning into the queerness (in all senses of the word) and I think they’re better for it. I mean they have a blonde, bisexual, badass babe as the undisputed Captain of this band of time-traveling weirdos and even when they travel to times that hesitate to accept her, her team never falters.
Theo Crain, Haunting of Hill House
I went into Haunting of Hill House looking for spooks and maybe some feels and it delivered on both tenfold. It had all the makings of the best horror movie you’ve ever seen, but then added a layer of character development that’s otherwise hard to accomplish in only 90 minutes. I have a special place in my heart for all the Crain siblings (except Steven… fuck Steven,) but Theo Crain wrapped her be-gloved hand around my heart and hasn’t let go since. As someone who considers herself an empath in the least supernatural sense of the word, Theo’s journey really spoke to me, and it didn’t hurt that she was also queer. Plus, (spoiler alert) despite being a queer woman in a horror scenario, she survives! It’s a miracle.
Mel Vera, Charmed
The new Charmed is, well, charming me way more than I expected. I went in hesitant because I loved the original, but hopeful because I loved the actresses cast as the new sisters. The show has proven to be so much fun, with a pointed and hopeful tone reminiscent of season one of Supergirl. I love Mel because she’s out and proud and smart and bold and not afraid to speak her mind. Well, unless she’s talking to Niko, but that’s just because she loves her a lot and can’t tell her she’s a witch! You know, normal girlfriend stuff. Anyway, I love her a lot. This season took a surprising turn for Mel and Niko’s relationship, but so far the show has given me faith that they aren’t about to sweep Mel’s queerness under the rug anytime soon.
Karolina Dean, Marvel’s Runaways
Honestly I can’t tell you what it is about Karolina Dean that I love so much. There’s something about her story, her loyalty to her friends, her disillusionment in her parents, her discovering the power within her –and discovering she likes kissing girls (well, one girl in particular) — I love it all. Karolina and Nico’s first kiss and the way she smiled after, like she finally let out a breath she didn’t realize she was holding, it was so perfect. And their second, too! As much as I love me some angst, the EASE with which Karolina came out to herself was so inspiring and I think important for people to see; you’re not any less queer for not having struggled with it, you know? Anyway, I love this sunshiny rainbow and her goth girlfriend so much and can’t wait to see what they get up to in the new season.
Natalie, Staff Writer
Annalisa “Quiet Ann” Zayas, Claws
There’s a scene in “Scream,” the Ann-centric episode in Claws‘ second season, where Desna’s trying to figure out whether to side with the Russians or Uncle Daddy and the Dixie Mafia in their ongoing feud. She turns to her crew for advice and, eventually, lands on Ann. The voiceover comes in, revealing Ann’s thought: “You’re gonna ask me about loyalty?”
That Ann’s angry at that moment isn’t a surprise to the audience — the day’s been filled with reminders of what she lost: her child, snatched from her arms at 17; her freedom, taken away when she’s sent to prison for stabbing her cheating girlfriend; her family, lost to her when she returned from prison, changed; the love of her life and her would-be family, sacrificed so that Desna could skate on a murder charge. Ann’s rage is not a surprise. What is surprising is that, rather than letting the silence lay thick or worrying about how she’s heard, as is her wont, Quiet Ann speaks for herself, “I think you got a lot of nerve asking me about loyalty.”
It’s a fundamental shift in how Claws has treated Quiet Ann for the prior 13 episodes. It also addresses one of the show’s fundamental flaws from the first season. At the time, I lamented that, despite offering us intriguing but brief glimpses into Quiet Ann, “each and every time there’s a possibility to make this show’s butch Latina into something other than a plot device, the writers go the other way.” Thankfully, with this scene, the show’s writers’ uncorked Quiet Ann. Her genie is not going back into its bottle ever again.
Blanca and Angel Evangelista, Pose
For the longest time, I didn’t see myself on television, but still, I had that impulse to find commonality between myself and the people that I welcomed into my home. I wouldn’t get to see all of me, but I’d always find something — Dwayne Wayne’s nerdiness, Brian Krakow’s unrequited love for Angela Chase, Pacey Witter’s “black sheep” status — to ensure that I could see some part of myself in stories that looked nothing like mine. As time passed, I started to see more characters on television that looked like me and loved like me and shared my experiences… and that representation, in a word, was amazing.
It is amazing. It’s amazing that we’ve reached a point where a person can wrap themselves in a cocoon of characters that affirm who they are on a regular basis. Is this how cis white dudes feel all the time?
This year, I’ve started to wonder — to worry, honestly — if we’ve grown too attached to the need to see ourselves on-screen. There’s value in representation, always, but there’s also value in seeing and investing in the stories that aren’t your own, particularly those from other marginalized communities. It’s how we build empathy. Are we choosing to be seen over seeing others? And, if so, what implications does that have for our community?
I stepped into the world of the 1980s New York ballroom scene over the summer, not because I saw myself in the characters immediately, but because even if I didn’t, their stories were ones worth hearing. Cis folks hear trans people’s voices most often in protest: of bathroom bills, of military service bans, of cis folks’ collective silence in the face of their community’s deaths. There’s more to the trans community than that. Pose gives trans women space to be sing, act, dance, direct and write. The show is worth watching for that reason alone.
But when you dig into Pose, you find yourself investing in these characters because, whatever our differences, we share a common humanity. I saw myself in Blanca Evangelista (played exquisitely by Mj Rodriguez), the matriarch of her chosen family. A woman who, instead of being content to inherit something, someday, took a step out on a ledge, and built something of her own. She is a woman who wants to leave a legacy, to leave some proof that she was here. She is a woman who, in the face of discrimination, keeps coming back over and over again, to move us a little closer to justice. She is a woman who cares for others and works tirelessly to secure their future. She is me, in every way that counts.
If Blanca is the person I am, Angel is the person I wish I were. There’s such a certainty to her – a certainty that I keep thinking she shouldn’t have yet, she’s so young – that I envy. Angel’s been through some stuff. As Stan says, sometimes it feels as if she’s been “disinvited from the rest of the world.” Still, she’s a believer in the possibility of it all. I long for her sense of belief and, as the season progresses, find myself drawn to Angel. That’s in part because Indya Moore is magnetic, but also because I’m desperate to protect that spirit in her. A spirit I want so desperately to see in myself.
Carmen, Associate Editor
Eddy Martínez and Emma Hernandez, Vida
I thought about separating Vida protagonist Emma Hernandez from her stepmother Eddy for the purpose of this list. Certainly, the commanding performances by Mishel Prada and Ser Anzoategui each deserve their own recognition.
Prada’s Emma is tightly wound and multi-layered, an iceberg whose mass is 90% beneath the surface of its tip. It’s brave to deliver such a careful performance for a character that, quite honestly, it takes a couple of episodes to even like. That’s perhaps what is most wonderful about Emma; her love is hard won. But once you’ve opened yourself to her, there’s no turning back. She’ll consume your thoughts. I know she has consumed mine.
As Eddy, Anzoategui took the complete opposite approach. They opened their emotions wide and gaping right from the first moment we meet. Eddy’s eyes are mournful and haunting, her heart feels so visceral that you can almost see it beating on the table. She’s desperate to find any way forward after the death of her wife, she’s desperate to build a relationship with the daughters she’s left behind. Anzoategui never loses themself to Eddy’s rawness, instead choosing to shade the widow’s emotions with nuance. There’s a silent bathtub scene in Vida’s third episode that I still haven’t put down nearly six months later. It’s a testament to Anzoategui’s work.
Still, the most gripping performance I saw between a pair of actors this year was the dance created between Prada and Anzoategui together. They found honesty, even when its ugly, between their characters. They found love between all the rubble and broken hardness. For that, I’m pairing them together. (The fact that Prada also had this year’s hottest sex scene certainly doesn’t hurt.)
Blanca Evangelista, Pose
I’ve tried writing about Pose at least four times, and each time it’s ended up in the scrap pile because, really, what is there to say? Its goodness has surpassed words. Yes, watching Pose is important and culturally significant because it boasts the largest cast of trans women of color in television history. I do not want to shortchange that fact. I also wouldn’t want the historical weight of this moment to overshadow the fact that Pose is just damn good, supremely crafted television. It’s not a stretch to say that you’ll see it on a lot of critic’s year end lists, and not just the gay ones. This show is a powerhouse; it’s a force to be reckoned with.
Natalie is absolutely right: it’s important to watch television that doesn’t necessarily reflect you. I’d go as far as to argue that as a queer community, it’s our responsibility to lift up those voices of our siblings who aren’t being heard. We have to see our own humanity, because few others will grant us such grace. That said, the reason I love Blanca Evangelista (richly colored and portrayed by Mj Rodriguez) is because of how much she reminds me of myself. I wrote this summer, “Blanca Evangelista is the kind of character I’ve been waiting my whole life for. She’s an Afro-Latina, Puerto Rican, and fighting like hell to keep her queer chosen family together and make a name for herself in this world.” It’s still true. She’s the closet I’ve ever come to seeing all of me at once. And for that, she will always have my heart.
Annalisa “Quiet Ann” Zayas, Claws
Judy Reyes proved this year that it’s not the size of the role, it’s what you do with it. I’m selecting Quiet Ann for this list based on the strength of one single episode.
“Scream” was an episode of queer women’s television unlike almost any other this year. It’s a stand out in a year full of stand outs. In fact, I’d argue that even when we take a long historical eye towards the queer women’s TV canon, this episode is still going to hold its own. In less than 45 minutes, Reyes took a someone who previously had not been much more than a silent comic relief and perfunctory side character, and found the depths of her soulfulness. It’s hard to do much with a character who rarely talks, a character for whom “quiet” is literally in her name. Yet, Reyes proved that Anne isn’t quiet because she’s an afterthought. She’s quiet because she’s interior to herself. She’s thoughtful and considerate. She’s full of pain and remorse, but also stubborn hopefulness in the face of hopeless surroundings. It’s hard to bring such meditative introspection to a television dramedy that’s made a name for itself in over the top parody, but the Scrubs alum is the exact right woman for the job. She threads the needle every time.
Anissa Pierce, Black Lightning
ANISSA. MOTHER F*CKING. PIERCE. If you didn’t think I was going to include our very own black lesbian superhero on this list, you were gravely mistaken. Before she even made her debut last January, Anissa’s bonafides spoke for themselves. She’s the first lesbian superhero on the CW. She’s the first black lesbian superhero ever. She’s a bullet-proof black lesbian on the very network that, until perhaps recently, was most famously tied to the killing of one of their lesbian characters with a gunshot. She’s a bullet-proof black lesbian in a country where black people are still fighting for the very respect of our lives as we continue to be shot down as victims of police and state violence. And that was all before the first episode aired.
What followed was even better. Anissa is brave; she’s tenacious (okay, and a little impetuous); she’s smart – like nerdy book smart, she’s in medical school smart; she loves her family and fights against systemic injustices in her community. She also has relatable flaws. She puts up walls and flits between romantic loves because the very idea of commitment startles her. Did I mention she’s been gifted with some of the best fight choreography this year? And that those fights happen almost exclusively against other women badasses? Nafessa Williams has delivered an easy-to-love performance this year, and I can’t wait to keep on loving her!
Catra, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power
I recently came across a tweet on my timeline where a fan described Catra’s storyline as one of the best origins for an antihero this year. And sure, maybe that sounds hyperbolic, but I think that fan was on to something. It’s easy to care for Catra right from the beginning. She has a comeback for every putdown. She’s almost effortlessly cool with her torn up black jeans and perfectly spiked hair. She’s all edge and dark, warm colors in She-Ra’s otherwise pastel rainbow colored We’re Going To Win in the End! world. Most interestingly, Catra is dangerous. She’s legitimately threatening.
I intended for She-Ra to be pleasant background noise while I completed my Saturday morning chores, but Catra demanded all of my attention. What became clear was how much Catra hurt. She deeply felt the loss of her best friend. Her funny comebacks were thinly veiled covers for the old wounds she didn’t want you to see. She self-sabotaged herself at every turn, as if she was afraid to really try. By the time I arrived at the episode dealing with the emotional abuse that Catra and She-Ra dealt with in their childhood, I was in tears. I don’t remember the last time I cried at animation not made by Pixar! Here was Catra, filled up with a lifetime’s worth of pain and just trying to bottle it before it poured over everything.
It’s hard to make an animated villain that doesn’t feel, well, broad and cartoon-sh. Catra was completely three-dimensional. Also, did you catch her in that tux at Princess Prom? Can you swoon over a cartoon character? Because I think I just did.
Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya, Staff Writer
Sadie, The Bisexual
The second I set my eyes upon the gay art Mommi that is Sadie, I was smitten! Look, like all characters on The Bisexual, she has her flaws. She makes Leila’s own sexuality journey kind of about herself. And then she rebounds with her employee. But, would I gladly volunteer to co-parent the child she desperately wants to have? Fuck YES. Ruin me, Mommi!
Theo Crain, Haunting Of Hill House
I really, really loved Haunting Of Hill House and aside from its technical stunner of a sixth episode, the best chapter is easily the one dedicated to its resident empathic lesbian Theodora Crain. Because of her, I firmly believe that gloves should be a lesbian fashion trend. Let’s just say that an emotionally withholding, somewhat messy lesbian who tries to fuck way her problems is… something I’m very drawn to.
Jane Ramos, Jane The Virgin
Am I listing my favorite television characters or the television characters I want to date? SAME THING! Jane Ramos’ intense confidence and the way she gradually melts over Petra Solano was easily one of my favorite parts of Jane The Virgin this year.
Arthie Premkumar, GLOW
Okay, so we barely got a glimpse at Arthie’s sexuality questioning or the potentially blossoming romance between her and Yolanda last season of GLOW, but I’m so starved for queer South Asian representation that I gotta give her a shoutout. Hopefully next year on GLOW brings much more!
Emma Hernandez, Vida
She’s hot; she’s complicated; she’s a control freak; she’s an emotional disaster. So Vida’s Emma hits all the right buttons when it comes to the television characters I enjoy watching. Crying while masturbating? A goddamn icon.
Heather Hogan, Managing Editor
Rosa Diaz, Brooklyn Nine-Nine
Brooklyn Nine-Nine has always been one of my favorite can’t-miss shows, but in 2018 I became a full-on evangelist for it, largely because of the way it handled Rosa’s coming out storyline. First of all, because noted bisexual Stephanize Beatriz was consulted by the writers on it; and second of all, because it was just so good. It’s very rare to see a character come out as bisexual and say the word “bisexual.” It’s even rarer when it’s an established character on a broadcast network show. What made Rosa’s story great was more than just the stats. It was just so Rosa. The sheepish, but gruff, way she told Boyle she was dating a woman. The time limit she gave the squad — exactly one minute and zero seconds — to ask questions. And then her heartbreaking, heartwarming, uncompromising coming out episode with her parents. It was so funny and so real and so Rosa.
Elena Alvarez, One Day at a Time
One Day at a Time has been on for two seasons and I’ve probably watched it more than any other comedy ever, besides The Golden Girls. (And, as you’ll see by comparing my list to everyone else’s, my heart beats for comedies.) Often times sitcoms stop with the revelation of a queer character’s sexuality — but ODAAT gave Elena a season two storyline that was as sweet and awkward as any first time queer romance I’ve ever seen on TV. I scooted closer to the TV when she was trying to figure out if Syd liked her, cheered when they had their first kiss, and swooned like a cartoon character when they went to their first dance together. Plus, Elena had lots to do outside of her relationship; she grew as an individual person, too, learning more about herself, her culture, her family, and even her gender presentation.
Leila, The Bisexual
Because I am a human afflicted with humanity’s narcissism I am most drawn to TV characters whose bumbling, sweet nerdiness (see above) remind me of myself or whose sense of moral courage and heroism (see below) show me the me I want to be. What I am not drawn to is messy TV characters, especially messy queer women TV characters — but among the many revelations I had while watching Desiree Akhavan’s The Bisexual this year was that messy queer women TV characters are usually just sloppily written queer women TV characters. Akhavan’s Lelia is generous and selfish and hard and sharp and still full of wonder and boi is she messy! But that only made me love her more! She’s authentic in a way I’m not sure I’ve experienced from a mid-30s queer woman on television. And the way the show explores her bisexuality is definitely not something I’ve ever seen. It doesn’t indict anyone; it just asks a lot of questions and generously explores the answers.
She-Ra, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power
I was more excited about Netflix’s She-Ra reboot than anyone I know and was also more surprised than anyone when it exceeded every one of my expectations, including the fact that it’s maybe the queerest thing I have ever seen on TV in my life. Just so casually unapologetically queer. Adora, to me, is the perfect metaphor for growing up in an oppressive, oh let’s say, conservative white evangelical Christian community and lucking your way out of it to fight on the side of the good guys (who you’d been taught were the bad guys). She’s tough and smart and destined for greatness as she chooses goodness and also she just loves horses! (And Catra.)
June, Forever
I know this show has been out for several months now, but I still don’t want to spoil anyone who hasn’t seen it. I’ll just say that if Maya Rudolph doesn’t win an Emmy for playing a middle-aged woman whose simmering desires and rage are awakened by another middle-aged women who’s even angrier than she is, I will be shocked. This is one of those rare shows that when I was watching it, I was like, “Wait, have I never seen this queer story before? I haven’t! I really haven’t!” (Also, if you still haven’t read Caity Weaver’s profile of Maya Rudolph, you really have to rectify that.)
Ruby and Sapphire, Steven Universe
That they got married on Cartoon Network and smooched right on their non-binary femme Gem lips would be enough, but it’s not just the revolutionary representation that made them so great (again) this year; it’s that they’re brilliantly written characters who grow together and apart. They’re badass and they’re adorable and when Garnet marched into the most epic battle of her life, in her wedding dress, her battlecry was the best description of a relationship I have ever heard: “I am the will of two gems to care for each other, to protect each other from any threat, no matter how vast or how cruel!” Y’all couldn’t stop her 5,750 years ago and you cannot stop her now.
LEAST FAVORITE
Riese, Editor-in-Chief
Lila Stanton,The Purge
I started watching The Purge to see AZMarie do pull-ups in a sports bra, and found myself surprisingly drawn into the show as a whole, primarily into a love triangle between Lila, Jenna and Rick. Mostly because I was certain Rick was an asshole and Jenna was going to leave him for her true love, Lila, with whom she exchanged sweet kisses by the pool at a white supremacist murder party. Lila was not like her terrible parents! She was a lesbian who loved equality for all mankind! Then, over the course of two episodes, she slipped directly into the gaping maws of the psycho lesbian trope, which led to her eventual death.
Valerie Anne, Staff Writer
Jenna Betancourt, The Purge
Like Riese, I also had high hopes for Jenna and Lila at the beginning of this show, with the sexy flashbacks and the sexier poolside kiss. I thought for sure she was going to ditch her scheming, potato-of-a-man husband before things got too insane. Alas, she chose wrong. I also quit this show before having to watch Lila be tripped up by tropes because it’s 2018 and self-care is important.
Just, everybody, Shameless
I get that V didn’t have a lot of experience with bisexual people before she started being in a throuple with Kev and Svetlana, but I feel like she was very willing to go back to IDing as straight after Svetlana left (well, after she ACTIVELY made life miserable for Svetlana) and try to chalk it up to being kinky. Also, I’m mad that after eight full seasons of wishing for Fiona to realize she was bisexual, and really thinking they were going to go there with Nessa, they made DEBBIE be the Gallagher sister in a relationship with a woman?? DEBBIE??? I love this show, but hoo boi they made me mad this year. Don’t even get me STARTED on the Gay Jesus cult. JUST DON’T. I’m going to finish out the season but if they really think they can go on without Emmy Rossum they have another thing coming.
Peach Sallinger, Hashtag You on Lifetime
Peach is on my “worst” list not because I didn’t like her, but because i didn’t like her storyline. She started off so great. Shay Mitchell delivered her strongest acting performance to date, and Peach was the only voice of reason for miles around. However, if people who read the book hadn’t already told me she was a lesbian, I wouldn’t have known until it was revealed that she was maybe a psychopath and had dozens of photos of Beck sleeping and/or half-naked that didn’t appear to be taken with consent. :deep sigh: I stopped watching after she was smashed on the head with a rock but before she was murdered, and frankly I think the new exorcism movie Shay is in will treat her better than this show did.
Natalie, Staff Writer
Nova Bordelon, Queen Sugar
This one hurts, y’all.
I wanted Nova Bordelon to be great. I wanted this character, an original creation of Ava DuVernay’s designed to add to the rich tapestry penned by Natalie Baszile, to be great. I wanted this character, imbued with the spirit and identity of the founders of the Black Lives Matter movement, to be great. And, most of all, I wanted this character, played by Rutina Wesley, who I’ve adored (read: thirsted over) since long before she came out as queer last year, to be great. I wanted Nova Bordelon to be great – for Rutina, for me, for the culture.
But, oh no…
Because, even though it’s 20GAYteen, and even though GLAAD gave Ava DuVernay an “Excellence in Media” award, Nova Bordelon was not great this season. Over the last two years, Queen Sugar has erased Nova’s bisexuality from her identity and it’s been so disheartening to watch. Hearing Nova cry out for freedom, echoing the very words she said to her girlfriend in Season One, to her sister’s ex-boyfriend, Remy, of all people has been like pouring salt in an open wound.
Carmen and I talked about a lot of this back in August when the latest season of Queen Sugar wrapped, so I won’t belabor the point too much, but I will say this: one of the things that made this television show great, from the outset, was its full-hearted embrace of revolutionary politics. Carmen, quite rightly, called the first season a “black feminist masterclass.” It stood firmly on the side of justice and representation and was unapologetic about it. What worries me about Queen Sugar’s bisexual erasure is that it might be symptomatic of a shift, away from the revolutionary, and more towards the respectable.
And if that’s the case — if this once revolutionary show is going to embrace respectability politics — then it has become a shell of its former self and may not be worth investing in at all anymore.
Bárbara and Mercedes, Perdona nuestros pecados
Earlier this year, when I was putting together our March Madness competition, I decided to create an International region, as a small way to acknowledge Autostraddle’s international readership. I scoured the Internet in search of 16 kisses worthy of inclusion in our contest and, in doing so, I stumbled upon Perdona nuestros pecados (Forgive Our Sins), a Chilean telenovela set in the fictional town of Villa Ruiseñor during the 1950s. The lesbian storyline on the show features Mercedes Möller, the sheltered daughter of the town’s mayor, and Bárbara Roman, the cosmopolitan but stifled wife of the town’s new police commissioner. They grabbed my attention in a way that few shows I discovered would — I’m pretty sure it was the couple’s second kiss in the church that hooked me — and I grew to love this pairing.
I’d watch the show live and glean what I could from the context and what little Spanish I know. I’d follow the hashtags on social media, discuss the show with other fans and eagerly wait for clips of the show and their translations. And, if the show had ended with its first season (which, by the way, included one of the best lesbian love scenes I’ve ever seen on TV), I would have no doubt included Bárbara and Mercedes among my picks for the Best of 2018. But apparently, even though it’s 20GAYTeen, I still cannot have nice things.
In an unprecedented move, the network decided to extend the telenovela for a second season and, for a while, it was good. With the romance between the women cemented, the story became more about the drama which was to be expected. Then the wheels came off and the writers subjected this couple to one awful trope after another and dug themselves into a hole so deep that they couldn’t really get out of it — and, in the process, diminished this once great couple.
Because we’re talking about our least favorite characters and we include pictures with our posts, it’s easy to attach our scorn to the actors but, honestly, it’s hardly ever about them (María Bello and Soledad Cruz were amazing). As with so many queer stories on television, Bárbara and Mercedes faltered because the writers got lazy. Too often, writers pen beautiful storylines about women falling in love because, even if they’re not queer women, that’s the part that they understand.After that, when it’s time to write about what a relationship between two women actually looks like, they can’t even fathom it. So, instead, they reach for tropes, either not realizing they were tropes or wrongly believing that they could succeed where so many others failed (spoiler alert: you can’t).
We need writers to do better. Be creative or, better yet, hire queer women to tell their stories. I only hope the writers behind Bárbara and Mercedes learn that lesson before the possible spin-off.
Carmen, Associate Editor
Lila Stanton, The Purge
That sure was a rollercoaster! Like Riese, I came to The Purge with very low expectations, just wanting to see AzMarie sweat a bit in a sports bra (by the way, not nearly enough of that! Thanks for nothing, show). And much like Valerie, I was a goner from the first poolside kiss. I was 100% certain that The Purge was going to end with Jenna and Lila was the quintessential horror movie “final girls,” raising the sword of justice and holding each other in their arms as daybreak rose on another day. They were going to be the Lesbian Avengers! The complete set up was there! Instead Jenna decided to raise her baby with a potato sack and Lila got a complete and total personality transplant! Why? I have no idea! I assume because without turning her into a psycho trope at the last minute, her death wouldn’t have made any sense! So the writers forgot all their character development, Lila turned into some caricature from The Hand that Rocks the Cradle, and then she died. Good times, folks. Good times.
Nova Bordelon, Queen Sugar
Natalie said all that needed be said upthread. The only thing I have to add are my tears.
Do you want the salted water from my very body Queen Sugar? Take it. You’ve already taken everything else.
Heather Hogan, Managing Editor
Peach Sallinger, You
This was the weirdest year because almost no one on our TV team could think of any characters we hated. Even when we started digging down into, like, “Okay, but who was just written poorly?” I don’t know if that’s because there was so much excellent queer TV, none of us watched what was subpar; or if most things really were just good this year. Either way, that’s an excellent problem to have and my answer to this question is Peach Sallinger. It’s not because she was a lesbian psycho; I don’t mind that trope anymore and, frankly, it was refreshing to see Shay Mitchell play just a hardcore bitch. But like Valerie said, she was so underwritten it was hard to tell if she really was going to be a lesbian at all and then she got walloped in the skull with a rock almost as soon as we found out. Honestly, even if she’d lived, it wouldn’t have been worth the investment because every goddamn minute of this show was voiced-over by Dan Fucking Humphrey.
Harlots’ Season Two Is Queer, Here, and Transcendent
This review contains spoilers for the entirety of Harlots Season Two.
Season One of Harlots, a Hulu series produced and written entirely by women, captured me with its surprisingly authentic portrayal of indoor sex work. I was struck, last year, by how a story set three centuries ago could yank my mind right back to the massage parlor as urgently as running into a former client outside the 59th Street Bloomingdales (which, for the record, happened to me twice). With that basic groundwork so handily laid bare, I was struck, this year, by how Harlots’ sophomore season managed to set forth a story more applicable to the modern day than any of the dozens of deliberately-branded “#MeToo Era” episodes actually set in the modern day delivered this year.
Harlots becomes, like our very lives themselves in the year of our thwarted lordess two thousand and eighteen, the story of women, queers and people of color desperately clawing for some access to freedom — whatever that is or looks like, whoever actually has it. The ongoing turf war between rival bawds Lydia Quigley and Margaret Wells is framed within a broader context in which both women struggle for any genuine power or agency when the buck repeatedly stops before a group of sadistic wealthy white men who call themselves “Spartans,” and the men in their economic class and social circle who don’t care who they hurt.
“The Spartans were a superior race,” the insufferably handsome Lord Fallon explains to his mistress, Lucy Wells. “They killed their lessers, the Helots, as a rite of passage.”
“What made them lesser?” She asks.
“Their blood,” he answers, fingering his sword like something he wants to fuck.
Most of a prostitute’s clients, or “culls,” are relatively good guys. That was true then, and it’s true now. But the majority of men in power, perhaps due to, oh I don’t know, power tending to corrupt and absolute power corrupting absolutely, are to put it simply, not, and a lot of them are clients. Last year it was easy to say that powerful men like these — who casually organize recreational gang rapes of kidnapped virgins, and murder anybody who gets in the way of their plans — still exist. We knew some names, sure, but not like we do now. Now we know, beyond any wish to believe otherwise, that men like this make the movies we watch, tell the jokes we laugh at, control our government and lead our academies. Harlots, then, is a reminder of exactly how far we haven’t come.
Sex work is the world’s oldest profession, after all, and due to its (usual) illegality and its very nature — selling what one sexually desires — it makes sense that it’d provide an ideal purview for “some shit never changes” revelations. Desire is notoriously resistant to politics and cultural evolution and so are underground economies, which don’t concern themselves with employment discrimination policies or sexual harassment regulations. Emily Lacey’s “House of Exotics,” in which she employs two Black women and one little person, could easily exist today, as regressive as it sounds. It remains true that the official legal authorities are notoriously uninterested in pursuing the murderers of sex workers, as with Kitty in Harlots, and workers feel they have to take justice into their own hands. It’s no wonder when contemporary showrunners want to make a statement about the nature of man, the danger of power and the fallibility of humanity through science fiction, sex workers always turn up — look at The Handmaid’s Tale, or Westworld.
Regardless of the era, legal and cultural reactions to sex work and workers lay bare conceptions of who is worthy of agency, of respect, of self-determination, of basic safety to their physical beings and the expectation of that safety remaining constant. Even a society that seems safely stratified — prostitutes are dirty and deserve what they get, while purer women are at least deserving of mourning and pity if they’re harmed — isn’t as stable as it seems. Part of the social function of the stigmatized prostitute is to provide civilian women a role to fear stooping to — as Season Two shows us with the increasingly slippery positions of sex worker-adjacent women like Lady Fitz and Amelia, or Lucy with her aspirations of rising to a life where she has power unsullied by her family’s industry.
If Season One was about sex work, Season Two is about the reality that what’s done to sex workers is inextricable from what’s done to all women — the lessons about power, violence, solidarity and struggle in stories about sex work are ones that the larger conversation about gender ignores at its peril. Sex work remains an illuminating and superior lens through which to take stock of the restless, uncomfortable gender dynamics and power structures that may experience shifts in style or public acceptance, but never by degrees of import or influence.
But Harlots also flips us over, revealing the soft underbelly of this hard life: the respite of chosen family and the intensity of those bonds, more genuinely rewarding and life-sustaining than those that unite sin-soaked, supremacist brotherhoods. Women look out for each other, break bread together, start their own houses of ill-repute together. The only men any of these women rely on are either gay or Black, and Season Two adds another Black male character on top of Will North, Maggie Wells’ common-law husband, and their son Jacob — Noah Webster, a former soldier who now makes a living fighting at the local tavern, technically “free” but still barred from most avenues of employment. We’ve also added Nell, a black woman recruited to the “House of Exotics” by Emily Lacey, where she and Harriet quickly become friends and begin dreaming for a house of their own. We deserve a Season Three to see that aspiration fully realized — as it’s likely Harriet is based on “Black Harriot,” who became London’s first and only black madam in the 1770s.
Still, aside from the rocky but steadfast connection between Maggie and Will, the most treasured bonds remain those between women, highlighting the entrepreneurial, conspiratorial and yes, sexual, freedom women can find only with one another.
Within this context, it’s fitting that Season Two is properly queer whereas the first was only occasionally so. It felt like too much to ask that the crackling sexual tension between Liv Tyler’s understated Lady Fitzwilliam — wealthy beyond measure but unable to access her own fortune, guarded carefully by her Head Spartan brother — and prized prostitute Charlotte Wells would ever come to bear upon us all, but indeed it does. After so many years of self-imposed celibacy following the incestuous rape that led her to birth a daughter she’s never met, Lady Fitz chooses to have actual sex for the first time with Charlotte, who offers herself with faithful interest and devotion. A man cannot undo what her brother had done, but a woman? A woman had a shot, and a woman hits a nice homosexual home run for us all.
There’s more queerness where that came from, of course. Violet is back, landing herself in jail for petty theft in the first episode, then rescued by her beloved Amelia’s entreaty of the new Justice, Josiah Hunt, to hire Violet as household help rather than shipping her off to America, where she would undoubtedly be sold as a slave. (Although Violet points out that her situation with Justice Hunt has a lot in common with slavery.) In this new space, Violet and Amelia have slightly more access to one another, but there’s more scrutiny, too. Violet, forever having fended for herself, has to prioritize survival, whereas Amelia, raised puritanically, is carried away by her first tender steps into a world of unbridled emotion. She wants more of it, and now, but Violet’s instinct is to take a step back and protect Amelia, even encouraging her to accept Justice Hunt’s proposal of marriage.
Perhaps one of the show’s most tender connections is that between Amelia and Prince Rasselas, a gay street kid who lost his “sweet boy” to illness and is the only person Amelia knows who might understand her inner turmoil. Now that her mother has caught wind of her affair with Violet, their time together feels dangerously limited, and both struggle, again, against a ceiling preventing any true agency.
Which brings me to our final queer character, if I may: Nancy Birch, who I’ve previously described as Pirate Dominatrix Laura Benanti. Nancy Birch, perpetually scowling and disheveled like a girl who couldn’t be bothered to fix herself up for work after a night at Tunnel. Nancy’s ready to launch an underclass uprising at poor Kitty Carter’s lovingly slapdash funeral, dressed like fucking Captain Hook, responding to Margaret Wells’ declaration that Kitty Carter was innocent with, “Kitty Carter was guilty of the worst crime you can commit! The crime of being poor!” They rile up the distracted crowd: “We are a sewer full of rats being ruled by a handful of foxes!” Ironically and tragically, Nancy’s punishment for disturbing the peace in this manner is similar to what so many men have paid her to do to them: she’s cuffed to a pole and flogged. Like so many brief, inspired protest movements, the post-funeral uprising is squashed before it can even get wings, and things continue apace. Physically destroyed, Nancy holes up in Greek Street to heal. As Lucy, Charlotte and Will come to check in on her, their familial bonds set us up for the final two episodes of prison visitation by the same cast of characters. In those final episodes, Nancy’s long-swelled feelings for Maggie, who is like a sister but also something more than that, give us the season’s biggest tearjerker.
Although Margaret Wells remains a frustrating antiheroine, foolishly punting her faithful husband out of her house on suspicions he’s got eyes for Harriet (who she throws out too, for good measure) in the first episode, because he dared to help her not lose her children forever, and is seemingly unable to resist the urge to yell at her enemies in public, her wrested lot in life is downright holy compared to Lady Quigley’s. Lesley Manville outdoes herself at every turn, playing a bawd ultimately no better than the men she serves — although she’s at least ultimately vexed to find herself, when it’s all said and done, swiftly rendered powerless and robbed of agency on account of her gender.
Near the end of the season, Emily Lacey is forced to confront her girl Cherry for spying on her at Lydia Quigley’s behest. “My Ma was small,” Cherry says, regrettably. “She always told me; ‘any flotsam passing, you cling to it. You keep yourself afloat.’ I chose the wrong raft. I’m sorry.”
It’s a quick scene without much consequence, and despite the girls of Harlots generally erring on the side of eternal grudges and fiercely-enforced loyalty oaths, Emily gives her a pass, citing Charles’s soft heart and the opportunity to double-cross Quigley with a spy switching sides. But maybe Emily is sympathetic to her plight, in a way, having once landed at Quigley’s herself under similar auspices.
Cherry manages to capture so much about this world in that line, though — any flotsam passing, you keep yourself afloat. And it is picking the wrong rafts that so often gets these girls and their associates in trouble, after all — or maybe it’s not the wrong rafts. Maybe it’s that rafts are all there is to float on, and that off there in the horizon, every man in power is trawling the deck of a leisure cruise, eating grapes off the genitals of a naked woman, prone for his pleasure.
Lydia Quigley’s decision to harvest and present, for the raping, a young girl who thinks she’s been hired as a servant, is what finally pushes her remaining allies over the edge. Again, this serves as a handy allegory for much of what’s gone down in recent history — a serial predator, never having been punished for their misdeeds, takes things just one step too far and loses their loyal confidants. It is a group of women and Black men who devise a plot to thwart the sexual assault, but Quigley senses something is amiss and stops it in its tracks. The dominoes in place, everything comes tumbling down, leading to a finale as devastating as it is hopeful, leaving us all hungry for more. There were moments in that final hour — like the one where they’ve got Lord Fallon tied up, before the moment when they leave him alone there and it’s obvious he won’t stay — that had me literally cheering like a football fan.
Basically, what I’m telling you is that stories about sex workers are not niche, they are transcendent and universal, and often the truest and most enduring stories about Western Civilization ever told.
Spring/Summer 2018 TV Preview: All the Lesbian and Bisexual and Trans Women TV Characters Your Heart Requires
The time has come to talk about spring and summer teevee! Okay, the time has kind of passed to talk about spring teevee, but not by too much — all of these shows that started in spring are still airing! It’s been a pretty okay year for LGBTQ women on television so far. Very few deaths, historically speaking, and a decent amount of kissing and some critically acclaimed series filled out with queer women. Summer is always an exciting time for us because it’s when the genre shows rain down in full force and we’ve always had the most representation in sci-fi and fantasy. This spring and summer, though, there’s plenty of non-supernatural dramas too. Below is every show we know about that has a premiere date. We’ll keep this list updated as new premiere dates are announced, and you can bookmark this page or reference it from the Arts & Entertainment Menu at the top of your Autostraddle Website Page.
April 2018 Queer TV Show Premieres
It’s true, these shows have already begun — but they weren’t in our winter preview, and we want to make sure they’re on your radar!
Star, Wednesday March 29th (Fox) – Season Two
Star’s a soap opera about low income, teen girls of color reaching for the music superstar dreams. It has had an impressive slate of black QTPOC representation in front of and behind the camera — including Amiyah Scott as Cotton Brown, becoming the first trans actress to play a trans woman in a regular network TV role, and out actor Miss Lawrence as Miss Bruce. It also stars Queen Latifah and is produced by out gay producer Lee Daniels. One of the show’s lead protagonists is Simone Davis, a biracial, bisexual teen who’s in and out of foster care. She’s got an unbreakable spirit and determination to go after her goals. It wouldn’t be fair not to warn you that (SPOILER ALERT) Star buried one of its gays last winter. I still find the musical soap enjoyable, but it’s something to keep in mind. — Carmen
Siren, Thursday March 29th (Freeform) – Season One
A murder mermaid temporarily shed her tail and popped onto land for a while, learning the way humans do things and then tossing them aside to do what she wants. And sometimes that thing includes kissing a girl. The girl has a boyfriend but the boyfriend is into the mermaid too so we might have our first-ever man-woman-mermaid throuple situation heading our way on Freeform in this ten-episode series. — Valerie Anne
Famous in Love, Wednesday April 4th (Freeform) – Season Two
Bisexual actress Alexis is the star of her own reality television show this season, which means regularly negotiating the temptation to ruin the lives of everybody she knows and cares about in order to amass fame and the veneer of success! What an inspirational character for us all. — Riese
Imposters, Thursday April 5th (Bravo) – Season Two
The Bumblers, including our fave, Jules Langmore, are riding high after exacting revenge on the ex that betrayed them all but things quickly go sour and the trio are forced to regroup in Mexico. Season Two promises to delve more into Jules’ backstory, including introducing us to her sister, Poppy (Rachel Skarsten). — Natalie
Killing Eve, Sunday April 8th (BBC America) – Season One
Sandra Oh has finally booked the post-Grey’s Anatomy leading role she deserves, playing Eve, a spy tracking down a notorious bisexual assassin named Villanelle (Jodie Comer). Their obsession with each other is laced with sexual attraction. And even though it’s a spy thriller, Phoebe Waller-Bridge infuses this dark world with bits of unexpected humor that Oh and Comer bring out masterfully. Killing Eve is the sexy, queer spy thriller I’ve long craved. — Kayla (warning: due to the genre of this show, steady yourself for some gays to get buried.)
Supergirl, Monday April 16th (The CW) – Season Three
Supergirl took a hiatus to sort some stuff out and I’m really hoping that means great things for the back half of this season. Our resident lesbian, Alex, is still getting over her ex-girlfriend Maggie, so I doubt she’ll have any kind of lady love until Season Four, but hopefully the show continues to focus on her relationship with Kara, and remember that the show actually is about Supergirl, not her boring ex-boyfriend. Also if Alex wanted to go on a few bad Tinder dates just for giggles I’d be fine with that, too. — Valerie Anne
Westworld, Sunday April 22nd (HBO) – Season Two
When asked about exploring Dolores’s sexuality, Evan Rachel Wood said her character is “not either a man or a woman” and, furthermore, “All I can say is, yes, there’s going to be something. I wasn’t disappointed. I was like, ‘Yay,’ but that’s all I can say.” It is very difficult to describe Westworld at all in a little paragraph in a teevee preview — because LOL I barely understand what’s going on half the time. Still it’s some of the most exciting television on television these days, even if all the queer stuff has been either deeply buried/implied or very surface level. — Riese
Into the Badlands, Sunday April 22nd (AMC) – Season Two
Season Two came back both with and without a bang. That is to say, Tilda isn’t sporting her classic bang look anymore, but it’s because she needs her hair slicked back — the better to murder men with, my dear. It looks like she’ll be slaying enemies alongside her girl Odessa this season while she works out her mommy issues. We’ll also meet a new character who really upped the murder game; she has potential to really shake things up. — Valerie
The 100, Tuesday April 24th (The CW) – Season Five
I’ll be honest: It doesn’t matter how we do or do not write about this show, someone will get mad at us because we did or did not write about this show. So, here are the facts: The 100 still boasts a badaass bisexual leading character. The 100 also unrepentantly murdered a lesbian character that set off a chain reaction of activism that changed the landscape of queer TV forever. Whatever your relationship is to this show, it’s valid. We’re not telling you what to believe. What we’re telling you is that The 100, unlike Lexa, continues to exist.
The Handmaid’s Tale, Wednesday April 25th (Hulu) – Season Two
This show remains hella dark and chock-full of queer women — one of whom (Moira, played by Samira Wiley) has escaped to Canada where she’s dealing with Gilead-inspired trauma and another (Emily, played by Alexis Bledel) who has been sent to The Colonies to dig up nuclear waste until she dies! You can read my review of it here. — Riese
May 2018 Queer TV Show Premieres
Dear White People, Friday May 4th (Netflix) – Season Two
The black queer women supporting characters of Dear White People’s first season were super underwhelming, which personally hurts me because one of them was played by Nia Long — one of my oldest childhood crushes. Dear White People‘s based on the cult classic satire indie film of the same name about being a black student in a predominantly white university. The original film was produced by Lena Waithe and brought to screen by out gay writer/director/producer Justin Simien. Simien also helms the Netflix series and, according to the trailer, we can at least expect a Lena Waithe cameo in the second season! In her brief clip, she says “black lesbians” real slow and felt so good to my ears, I rewound it three times. — Carmen
Vida, Sunday May 6th (Starz) – Season One
I am so excited for you all to fall in love with Vida! Vida is about two Chicana sisters returning to their old neighborhood in East LA after their mother’s death. One of the sisters is queer. Both sisters are surprised to find out that, upon her death, their mother was married to a woman. Out non-binary actor Ser Anzoategui plays the butch lesbian widow. The show’s produced by an out queer Chicana, Tanya Saracho, and has a predominately queer Latinx writers room. It’s sooo, soo good y’all. It’s on Starz, which I know is not a cable channel that’s easily accessible for everyone, but I promise you that it’s going to be worth the effort to seek out! We’re going to be talking more about Vida in the upcoming weeks and helping you all find ways to support it — because we want you to have nice things!! And this is a really nice thing. — Carmen
Sweetbitter, Sunday May 6th (Starz) – Season One
Sweetbitter is the story of Tess, a 22-year-old who flees her old life for a new one in Manhattan where she immediately snags a job at an exclusive restaurant. Set in 2006, Tess serves an upscale clientele, hangs at an industry dive bar, learns a lot about food and wine and, mostly, learns a lot about people. One of her new friends is Ari, played by Eden Epstein, described as “a backwaiter by day and an adventurous lesbian and DJ by night.” The book was pretty good (although I was partial to it, having also been a young New York aspirant in 2006 and having waited tables in the city), perhaps the series will be even better! — Riese
13 Reasons Why, Friday May 18th (Netflix) – Season Two
I found Season One to be really f*cked up on just about every level including basic storytelling, and allegedly creators are taking this feedback into account with Season Two, which will shift its focus from Hannah’s suicide to a sexual assault trial. According to Netflix, “Liberty High prepares to go on trial, but someone will stop at nothing to keep the truth surrounding Hannah’s death concealed. A series of ominous Polaroids lead Clay and his classmates to uncover a sickening secret and a conspiracy to cover it up.” Furthermore, “Jessica’s recovery will also be explored as Yorkey looks to examine what it’s like to go from being a victim of sexual assault to being a survivor of sex assault.” Lesbian character Courtney Crimson will continue her role and sexually fluid Hannah will remain front-and-center.
Picnic at Hanging Rock, Friday May 25th (Amazon Prime) – Season One
The classic 1975 novel about three schoolgirls who vanish from Appleyard College for Young ladies on Valentine’s Day 1900 has been adapted before — Peter Weir’s 1975 film “certainly picked up on the erotic subtext” of the story, but the new Foxtel series “takes the sexual undercurrents rippling among the residents of Appleyard College and the local townsfolk and makes them a tad more obvious.” Somehow, a wooden dildo is involved. Regardless, we’re in. — Riese
Queen Sugar, Tuesday May 29th (OWN) – Season Three
Details are scant about what to expect from season three of Queen Sugar but with a focus on the “journey of fatherhood,” we anticipate Nova Bordelon exploring her unresolved issues with her late father, Ernest. We’re also keeping hope alive that 20gayteen brings Nova a girlfriend. — Natalie
June 2018 Queer TV Show Premieres
Humans, Tuesday June 5th (AMC) – Season 3
Here’s what we know about Season Three of Humans: “One year after the dawn of consciousness, a decimated and oppressed Synth population fights to survive in a world that hates and fears them. In a divided Britain, Synths and Humans struggle to broker an uneasy peace, but when fractures within the Synth community itself start to appear, all hope of stability is threatened.” Pansexual synth Niska will be back, but her girlfriend Astrid isn’t showing up on IMDB as part of Season Three. I hope she finds somebody else to be queer with. — Riese
Pose, Sunday June 3rd (FX) – Season One
There has never been a show like Ryan Murphy’s Pose on TV. Ever. It boasts 50+ LGBTQ characters and the largest number of trans series regulars in American TV history. MJ Rodriguez, Indya Moore, Dominique Jackson, Hailie Sahar and Angelica Ross are all playing trans characters, and Janet Mock and Our Lady J are producing and have both been in in the writers room. You’re about to learn a whole lot about ’80s ball culture! — Heather
The Fosters, Monday June 4th (Freeform) – Finale Event
After five seasons, the Adams Fosters clan are ready to say their final goodbye. The three episode finale mini series takes place roughly four years in the future from the main body of the show. All of the Adams Fosters children have graduated from either high school or college and the entire family is coming together to celebrate Brandon’s wedding. I don’t care about Brandon Adams Foster, ever, and the trailer for the finale does little to assuage my worries. However, The Fosters really stuck the landing of their final season. They brought back heart to their storytelling and refocused their central energy on Stef and Lena. It’s enough that to have regained my trust going into summer. — Carmen
Younger, Tuesday June 5th (TV Land) – Season 5
This is a good show and I don’t care if you believe me! Yes, there’s a straight love triangle at the center. And no, resident lesbian Maggie doesn’t get as much screentime as she should. But each season gets better and better at developing her character and bringing her into the fold and the real story here is women and their careers and their friendships. The last time we saw Maggie, she was in Ireland bedding the mother of the bride of her best friend Liza’s ex-boyfriend. She also has an on-again/off-again thing with Hilary Duff’s pansexual best friend, Lauren. — Heather
Sense8, Friday June 8th (Netflix) – Finale
AHEM: “Personal lives are pushed aside as the cluster, their sidekicks, and some unexpected allies band together for a rescue mission and BPO take-down in order to protect the future of all Sensates.” — Riese
Claws, Sunday June 10th (TNT) – Season Two
Quiet Ann and the ladies of Nail Artisans of Manatee County are back using their salon to launder money for the mob, only this time, it’s for a female-led Russian mafia. As the ladies are asked to do more, they realize their own capability — they’re criminals and they are good at it — and start to think that, maybe, it’s time they became their own bosses. — Natalie
The Bold Type, Tuesday June 12th (Freeform) – Season Two
This show ended up being one of summer’s sweetest treats last year, and I can’t wait for more romance between bisexual social media maven Kat Edison and lesbian artist and activist Adena El Amin — including, apparently, a big meet-the-parents moment. I am ready to laugh, cry, and yearn for all of Jacqueline Carlyle’s power wardrobe. — Kayla
G.L.O.W., Friday June 29th (Netflix) – Season Two
When G.L.O.W. returns for its second season we will FINALLY get what we craved throughout its homoerotic first season: Yolanda, a lesbian wrestler played by Shakira Barrera. — Riese
July 2018 Queer TV Show Premieres
Heathers, Tuesday July 10th (Paramount) -Season One
UPDATE 6/5: THIS SHOW HAS BEEN OFFICIALLY FOREVER CANCELLED AND WILL NEVER AIR
The initial debut of this program was critically panned, and consequently withdrawn allegedly on account of the Parkland shooting. If they haven’t changed anything about the show since their first go-around, we’ll probably hate it.
Harlots, Wednesday July 11th (Hulu) – Season Two
We return to my favorite show ever about sex workers to find the city’s top madams in an even more dramatic feud than they were in Season One —Violet’s future in peril, her religious fundamentalist gal pal doing what she can to save her, and a new judge determined to rid his city of what he perceives to be “vice.” Liv Tyler joins the cast as Lady Isabella Fitzwilliam, a wealthy woman with zero personal freedom who has mad sexual tension with Charlotte Wells. — Riese
UnREAL, Monday July 16th (Hulu) – Season 4
Traci Thoms returns as Fiona, a power lesbian television executive, in the very uneven final season of this “Bachelor” send-up. Your favorite lesbian, Faith, does a one-episode guest spot as a therapist brought in to mediate a conflict between several contestants.
Wynonna Earp, Friday July 20th (SyFy) – Season 3
Season 2 was full of goo, babies, time warps, demons, and so many ladies kissing. It answered a lot of questions, and asked a whole lot more. Season 3 promises more mystery (Mama Earp?!), drama (a cult?!!), and, of course, quality queer content. At a recent panel, when asked about the gayness of Season Three, Emily Andras said, “What’s the straightest show you can think of? I feel like Season 3 makes Season 2 look like that straight show.” Yee haw. — Valerie Anne
Killjoys, Friday July 20th (SyFy) – Season 4
With Lost Girl’s Michelle Lovretta behind the wheel, it wasn’t really a surprise, but definitely a welcome turn when the main big bad of Season 3 ended up in a relationship with another running antagonist. Aneela and Delle Seyah are a unique pairing, to be sure, but they’ve made it clear that they’d risk just about anything for each other. Their fates were inextricably linked with Dutch, Johnny and D’av’s in the Season 3 finale, so I have a feeling we haven’t seen the last of these murder girlfriends. — Valerie Anne
Orange is the New Black, Friday July 27th (Neflix) – Season 6
Season 6 of OITNB promises, somehow, that it will get even darker than previous seasons as inmates are shipped out of Litchfield following the riot and sent to other prisons. We follow the women who end up in Max, where they try to negotiate a new set of prison gangs, divided by block, and an investigation into what happened during the riot that puts Taystee in a precarious legal position. Adrienne Moore, who plays Black Cindy, told The Hollywood Reporter, “Toward the end of season five, there were some people that were agreeing to stick together, and there were some people that were looking out for themselves. We’ll see the repercussions of those decisions in this next season.”
August 2018 Queer TV Show Premieres
Insatiable, Friday August 10th (Netflix) – Season One
The coming out story of this pretty much universally panned series is apparently its only redeeming factor!
The House of Flowers, Friday August 10th (Netflix) – Season One
A Spanish-language comedy-drama program about a dysfunctional high-class Mexican family that owns a prestigious flower shop. Juan Pablo Medina plays María José, a transgender woman who has a child with her ex-wife, Paulina, who is still carrying a torch for María.
The Sinner, August 15th (USA) – Season 2
This anthology series returns with a new case and a mostly new cast for Season 2, including Natalie Paul as Heather Novak, a black lesbian detective put on the case of a boy who murders his parents for very unclear reasons in very strange circumstances.
Mr. Mercedes, Wednesday August 22nd (Audience) – Season 2
Breeda Wool will be returning as techie lesbian Lou Linklatter, according to Den of Geek. As the first season drew from Stephen King’s book of the same name, Season Two will be drawing from a few follow-up novels. — Riese
The 17 Most Romantic Lesbian and Bisexual TV Moments of 2017
Click for more 2017 End of the Year Lists
A lot more women than usual kissed each other on our teeves this year! Some of them even did so with the lights on! But those weren’t the only swoon-y things that we watched (over and over and over again) in 2017. There were songs and bike races and hot air balloon rides and promises of forever and allusions to some of the most romantic tropes and movies of all times. These were some of the 16 most romantic lesbian and bisexual things of the year.
Marceline sings a new song for Princess Bubblegum, Adventure Time
Heather: On the way to Marci’s house with her dad, Finn and Jake said “maybe” she has a girlfriend, and then when they showed up she was lounging around in Princess Bubblegum’s sweater from the “Stakes” mini-series. Off they went to Marceline’s solo concert where she sang her most — her only? — romantic song ever, “Slow Dance With You.” Quite a journey with PB from “I’m Just Your Problem.”
Niska and Astrid fall in love against all odds, Humans
Valerie: “Nika and Astrid’s issues weren’t what you would expect — it wasn’t a Synth/human scandal, it wasn’t a woman/woman scandal. It was Niska running away from her feelings (which had more to do with feelings being new than anything else) and Astrid not letting her. It was a surprising happy place amid the carnage, and even though so many people — humans and Synths alike — didn’t survive the season, our lady-loving ladies miraculously did.”
Alex and Maggie’s first morning after, Supergirl
Heather: After fighting their feelings for each other for months (and a lifetime of Alex fighting her feelings for girls), Maggie and Alex had sex for the first time and woke up the next morning dappled in sunlight, dressed in each other’s clothes, smooching contentment and disbelief. To be honest I kind of couldn’t believe it was happening either.
Tessa and Mariah’s first kiss, The Young and the Restless
Natalie: “The racing heart, the long conversations that are never, ever long enough, the regret of any day spent apart. Mariah feels all of that, she just doesn’t feel it for Devon. It is not a small thing for Y&R to cast Mariah’s love for Tessa in the same mold as one of the show’s great supercouples, Nick and Sharon. It’s a normalizing force for a conservative audience that might not view a same-sex story that way.”
Kat and Adena’s Before Sunrise escapades, The Bold Type
Heather: Kat and Adena are my favorite TV couple of 2017 and while they have plenty of swoon-y moments to choose from, their blanket fort escapades in the airport the night before Adena was deported were my favorite. Even the title of the episode was drawn from Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise, one of the most romantic movies of all time. I was willing to suspends all my disbelief for this episode, including Kat and Adena having uninterrupted sex in the airport lounge, a full night of sleep in each other’s arms, and Kat not giving Adena her first class ticket when she decided to stay in NYC.
Gail and Erica Get Married, The Last Man On Earth
Riese: Gail and Erica’s relationship was initially written off as a thing they did before realizing they weren’t the only human beings left on earth, but eventually after three seasons of other pursuits, their union revealed itself to be the truest and most honest thing either had ever known.
Paige and Emily’s last bike race, Pretty Little Liars
Heather: This was some hardcore Paily fanservice and, let me tell you, for suffering through the last few seasons of this show, we deserved it. Bikes? Check. Musical montage? Check. Camera swirling kissing? Check. It wasn’t going to last and everyone knew it, but for a shining moment everything was right in Rosewood again.
Odessa asks Tilda to run away with her, Into the Badlands
Valerie: “I’ve mentioned before that too often kisses between two women are cast entirely in shadow, or are a quick peck in the middle of a camera transition. But not here, not now. The camera loves them and the music swells lovingly and the light glows softly as they kiss and kiss and kiss. Meanwhile I am pressing my hands to my face so hard my eyeballs almost pop out of my head. Everything’s fine. EVERYTHING’S FINE.”
Tig and Stephanie’s whole storyline, One Mississippi
Heather: Look, do not fall in love with a straight girl. But if you do make sure it’s your soul mate. I know, I know, Stephanie’s not straight, but she sure thought she was for a long time, even though me and you and Tig knew she was very much in love with another woman and therefore was not straight. When she finally confessed it, Tig said, “…but?” And Stephanie said, “No, but. Just … and.” And I for one have still not recovered.
Zoë and Rasha’s first kiss, Degrassi: The Next Class
Riese: There were so many fraught elements to this union — Rasha, a Muslim Syrian refugee, was scared to come out to her host family, which included their classmate Goldie, and Zoe didn’t know if Rasha was gay or not, and they were both just generally young and nervous and insecure. When their first actual date gets so complicated it ends up ending before it begins, Rasha fears their union is doomed, telling Zoe it’s okay if she’d like to call it off, after all, Zoe is fearless and beautiful and can have any girl she wants! Zoe is like, wait, YOU ESCAPED ACTUAL WAR JUST TO BE ON “DEGRASSI THE NEXT CLASS” AND YOU’RE CALLING ME FEARLESS? Then Rasha kisses her. I didn’t want to be afraid anymore, she says, as melodic acoustic hipster music swelled and the light hits their faces just so. Young love, y’all. Sweet and against all odds and despite all closets and obstacles and fears, there we have it.
Cosima and Delphine’s clone-saving mission, Orphan Black
Heather: Delphine sacrificed everything for Cosima, and to keep her promise to keep Cosima’s sestras safe — and the whole time everyone kept expecting her to reveal that she the ultimate bad guy. Well, not only did that turn out to be untrue, we actually got to watch her and Cosima join forces and work together to save the day. The episode also included their sexiest makeout and Cosima in this tux.
Waverly and Nicole fall in love in a parallel dimension, Wynonna Earp
Heather: Two women falling in love in alternate universes where they’re with completely different people and don’t even know each other is what fan fiction dreams are made of. If Waverly and Nicole had had to take off their clothes to share their body heat to stay alive in this episode, it would have been the most romantic moment in all history on any space-time continuum.
Lyria asked Eretria to be her queen, The Shannara Chronicles
Heather: In another year one or both of them would be dead, but not now! And even better, when Lyria was asking Eretria to be her queen she said they deserved a happy ending. “People like us,” she said. (Like you and like me!) They’re not together yet because Eretria has to get a handle on her darkness, but their sweet, slow kiss goodbye felt more like a pause. And it didn’t end with anyone getting shot with a stray bullet.
Stef and Lena’s Notebook-style makeout, The Fosters
Heather: Stef and Lena have gotten married so many times now and every new time it’s better than the last. This most recent one, especially, because it started raining and all their million kids and their guests rushed inside but they just stood out in it open-mouthed kissing each other and promising forever.
Amelia and Violet’s second kiss, Harlots
Riese: Amelia had been raised by her evangelist mother to see sex itself as evil, let alone women having sex for money, let alone falling in love with a woman who has sex for money and then kissing her on the mouth! So when Violet kissed Amelia after a gradual sexual tension build, it wasn’t surprising that Amelia immediately freaked out — which made Amelia’s return to Violet, and her eager kiss, that much sweeter.
Nomi and Amanita get engaged, Sense 8
Sense8 was cancelled way too soon, but in the season two finale, Nomi and Amanita did get engaged! Jamie Clayton’s post-season interview with The Hollywood Reporter was almost as beautiful as the on-screen moment. “It’s just another testament to the strength of their relationship and how they’re on the same page. That’s the beauty of love. Even if you take two different roads, if you end up at the same place, that’s the most important part about love,” she said.
Honorable Mention Even Though They’re Not Technically Gay: Grace and Frankie take a hot air balloon ride, Grace & Frankie
This is the part where this is the part where Grace ends her date with a man only 15 minutes in to turn it into a date with Frankie.
Riese and Erin: “When Frankie tells Grace she might be moving to Santa Fe, everything gets much gayer very quickly. Everything gays right out of control. Every word spoken is a word unspoken, and also a word that could easily precede the words “you have to stay because I am in love with you.”
As always these are the individual opinions of our writers and editors and we’d love to hear your additions, preferably bolded and in all caps with as many exclamation points as possible!!!!
Hulu’s “Harlots” Is a Gift to Feminists, Sex Workers, Queers and Herstory Lovers
In July, Hulu’s Harlots was renewed for a second season and this week, it was announced that actress Liv Tyler would be joining the cast as Lady Isabella Fitzwilliam, “an aristocratic social butterfly whose long-held secrets keep her in the thrall — and under the blackmailing thumb — of Lydia Quigley.” This seems like a good time, then, to talk about this incredible program, which is written, produced and directed entirely by women. Harlots has been pretty universally acclaimed by critics, as well as being lauded for its feminist overtones, its relative defiance of racial stereotypes and its progressive treatment of sexual assault.
What’s more, though, is that although it takes place 250 years ago, Harlots provides an unprecedented and surprisingly resonant depiction of the sex work industry from the perspective of the women within it.
Pictured: Margaret Wells (Samantha Morton), Emily Lacey (Holli Dempsey) & Fanny Lambert (Bronwyn James) Hulu
As a sex worker back in my mid-twenties, I voraciously consumed every visual media representation of willing sex workers I could get my hands on: cheap indie films with flimsy plots and unknown actors filmed in condos, sensationalized mainstream films with flimsy plots and well-known actors filmed in Vegas, the rare vintage classic like Luis Buñuel‘s Belle De Jour, a handful of Netflix-available documentaries, and, repeatedly, a YouTube clip of “Big Spender” from Fosse’s Sweet Charity that a co-worker once emailed to all the girls with the subject line, “REMINDS ME OF US.” I’d watch DVDs on my laptop between appointments, looking for some authentic context to my own life beyond the male-gazey fantasies of sex workers falling for their clients or requiring male-facilitated salvation that dominated the popular imagination. I consistently came up short.
But no camera captured the world I knew for a general audience — the complicated relationships between girls, the awkward understated rivalries between tightly-branded studios or the weight of secret lives against backdrops of artistic ambition and “real-world” obligations. Nobody had captured the alternately empowering and traumatizing experiences with clients and the character we all, in some way, were paid to become: polished, attractive, always up for a good time, prestigiously educated, delightfully bohemian and insatiably perverted.
Odd, then, to watch Harlots, all these years later, and only because it reportedly contained a slight lesbian storyline, and to find it easily the most realistic television portrayal of indoor-market female-managed sex work I’ve ever seen. The specifics are different, of course, but the generalities of “the oldest profession” have seemingly not changed all that much over so many centuries — which I’ll come back to in a second.
Pictured: Charlotte Wells (Jessica Brown Findlay) (C) Hulu
Harlots is a critically acclaimed, gritty, glamorous and, yup, feminist, period drama set in 1763 Georgian England, at a time when one in five London women made a living selling sex. Harlots stands as an excellent example of how much better the representation of women’s work can be when women are put to work telling those stories.
Working for a “house of ill-repute” wasn’t an entirely dismal prospect back then, relatively speaking. If you were born into wealth, you could marry, and then you and your wealth would become your husband’s property. Your husband was free to beat and rape you, and he was also socially permitted to openly patronize prostitutes or bring a full-time mistress into your home. But sex work was an option that provided women with gainful employment and at least a brief period of personal agency. As in the current day, there was a definite class system in order: there were women who worked the streets, and there were women kept in sophisticated “houses” with the eventual goal of attracting a “keeper” — a wealthy man who’d provide for his mistress forevermore, usually with the understanding that she’d no longer see other clients.
The story of Harlots centers on a turf war between two brothels, Margaret Wells’s (Samantha Morton) scrappy and diverse assortment of Cool Girls, and that of Lydia Quigley (Lesley Manville), where the upper-crust treat themselves to refined, pastel-draped powdered women who speak French and pose in human tableaus and play instruments to entice men starving for raunch beneath the petticoats.
Lydia Quigley (Lesley Manville) and her ladies
Margaret’s common-law husband William North (Danny Sapani) is Black, as is their five-year-old son, and she also has two white daughters, Charlotte (Downton Abbey‘s Jessica Brown Findlay) and Lucy (Eloise Smyth). The scurrilous and gorgeous Charlotte, one of London’s most prized girls, has attracted a “keeper” in Sir George Howard (Hugh Skinner), an idiotic fop who’s scurried away his wife’s fortune on Charlotte and is consistently vexed by Charlotte’s refusal to sign his keeper contract or stop flirting with other men. Skinner, previously flummoxed by women in Fleabag and W1A, is perfectly cast, which is to say that I wanted to scream YOU DON’T DESERVE HER at him 95% of the time.
Margaret is pushed to auction off her daughter Lucy’s virginity earlier than anticipated when their plan to move to a nicer part of town is thwarted by a 100-pound fine for operating a house of ill-repute. The court appearance and subsequent fine came, of course, after some malicious maneuvers by Lydia Quigley, and thus the two women are off to the races in a season-long feud relentlessly fed by further scandals, betrayals, violence, and Quigley’s partnership with a religious zealot determined to stop prostitution by yelling about G-d outside of Wells’ brothel for hours on end. Lucy doesn’t adapt well to sex work, and her inability to just pretend to like men she definitely hated was, well, pretty relatable!
Somehow, despite the years between then and now, Harlots‘ portrayal of a house of ill repute is strikingly authentic and familiar. “Harris’s List of Convent Garden Ladies” recalls the message boards of today in which escorts and bodywork girls are reviewed by their clients, evaluations as necessary to one’s success as Harris’s List was to these women. (And precisely as unfair — the opinions of one or two men often sealing one’s fate.) Different girls have different brands, like the dominatrix Nancy (Kate Fleetwood) (basically if Laura Benanti were a pirate queen, she’d be Nancy) and Emily Lacey (Holli Depsey), whose bawdy demeanor initially repels her high-class madam but eventually endears her to clients seeking someone with a little more grit. Harriet Lennox (Pippa Bennett-Warner), a former slave who has traveled to London with her white husband only to be suddenly widowed, learns how to cash in on the men who fetishize her in order to earn money to buy her children back from her husband’s brother.
Harriet Lennox (Pippa Bennett-Warner)
What makes Harlots so unique, then, is that the drama is centered within a group of women in a women’s workplace. Most TV and film portrayals of sex workers focus on individuals. The woman is usually forced/lured into the business by desperate circumstances and/or dark desires and/or a need for adventure and/or expensive taste and/or insatiable sexual appetites. She may have a hard-nosed pimp or sex worker friends she often sees on the job, and occasionally we get a film or storyline set in a strip club (usually male-written and male-directed), but never have I witnessed such an extensive window into the rich and multi-faceted relationships between women who work together in illegal women-run institutions like brothels and massage parlors. It’s not surprising these stories are rare — they are, after all, stories that do not center men and break out of the endless cycle of trope-laden sex worker stories.
On scripted television, sex workers are rarely the show’s topic, but instead just a detail about a character (most often, an exotic dancer) or a storyline. Only a few shows have centered on female sex workers: Band of Gold (1995-1997), The Client List (2012-2013) and Showtime’s The Secret Diary of a Call-Girl (2007-2011). The latter plays directly into male fantasies with an opening monologue that begins, “I love sex and money, and I love to suck a big fat cock, get orgasms and fill myself.” (I made it through about 1.5 episodes before shelving the entire series.) While these stories are certainly real — Belle’s was based on an excellent memoir by a Bristol escort, notable as it’s nearly impossible to find work like that written by real living sex workers — they’re certainly not the only ones worthy of portrayal. In Harlots, sex work isn’t all empowering sexual delight or violent confusing sacrifice — it’s both.
Betsey Fletcher (Alexa Davies) & Violet Cross (Rosalind Eleazar) (C) Hulu
The women of Harlots are matter-of-fact about their work, and the historical period and limited avenues for women enables a practical perspective rarely exhibited in more contemporary stories.
Harlots represents the fascinating world that surrounds the work with such stunning clarity: slow days amid rumors of raids, the constant fear of raids, avoiding raids by having clients in high places, the new girl getting stuck with the abusive client everybody else refuses to see and, of course, the bitter rivalry between a house owned by a woman who used to work for the woman who owns the rival house. Through Margaret Wells, we see the tension of a woman who has positioned herself as a caretaker for many women and is literally the mother of two who she also, technically, is “selling” for sex.
Which brings us to the lesbians. In Harlots, there is a slowly building romance between Violet Croft (Rosalind Eleazar), a harlot, and Amelia Scanwell (Jordon Stevens), the daughter of a religious zealot who has devoted her life to driving brothel owners mad. This isn’t where I expected the lesbianism to show up — I expected doubles with clients, or girls “practicing” to learn their trade. In fact, the most extensive discussion of lesbianism in 18-century English literature comes from a book about prostitution: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (Fanny Hill), by John Cleland. Of course, lesbian sex in this context is viewed merely as “practice” for sex with men, and on its own, it is incapable of pleasing its subject. “I now pin’d for more solid food,” Fanny says in the book, “and promised tacitly to myself that I would not be put off much longer with this foolery from woman to woman.” We don’t see any of that in Harlots, but there’s something especially tender about Violet and Amelia being one of only a few genuine romantic storylines on the show, rather than lesbianism showing up only in a more heteronormative context.
Hulu’s Harlots is entirely told from the “whore’s eye view,” executive producer Alison Owen told TV critics at TCA. There are “no male gazes” in the show; it is entirely about the women, looking outwards at their world. To that end, the team of producers, directors and writers is nearly entirely female, which, EP Debra Hayward said, “influenced the show in the way we wanted it to.” I look forward to seeing what these women bring to the next season.
Harlots returns to Hulu and ITV early-to-mid 2018.