Voting now open in 1st Annual AfterElton.com Primetime Visibility Awards

September 10, 2009

TV Movie/Miniseries

Television is an intimate experience. It’s in your home and is something you usually watch with people you choose to be around. The characters on your favorite shows drop by every week, and often start to feel like part of the family. Many a gay boy has adopted the ladies from The Golden Girls as surrogate grandmothers. Watching TV is a far different than going to a movie, which is a one-off event seen in public with strangers.

But not every television watching experience is the same. Some shows do only pop into our homes once, never to come back and snuggle up on the couch with us again. These are the made-for-TV movies or the mini-series, and while we might not get to know them as intimately as our favorite shows, they are often about bigger issues and presented on a bigger scale that amplifies their impact despite their limited duration.

Here are the gayest of the bunch this year.

Kiss Me Deadly

We finally got our gay James Bond in this here!TV produced movie starring the out, hunky Robert Gant. And while people were of mixed opinions on the movie's quality, if you go ahead and admit that Bond is cheesy, campy fun, this really was the same thing – minus the exotic locales, $200 million budgets, and expensive English sports cars.

In the beginning Bond wasn’t nearly as fancy-schmancy as he is these days, and Gant is just the strapping stud I’d travel to the moon with.

On the Other Hand, Death: A Donald Strachey Mystery

We’ll be the first to admit, we're kind of fond of the idea of a gay Mickey Spillane. And Chad Allen plays the gruff detective slob with just the right touch of grittiness that makes him believable. Plus, he and partner Timmy make the perfect odd couple, so the series hits on all cylinders there for us.

This particular movie featured a lesbian couple living out in the country, Timmy’s old flame coming back into town, and a bigger effects budget so they can burn things down, really raised the bar for the series. Sure, it was lacking in the beefcake of Third Man Out, and didn’t give us Morgan Fairchild in Shock To the System, but it was much stronger in the noir aspect, and the storytelling held you on the edge of your seat.

Pedro

In 1994, gay characters were still shockingly rare on television and unapologetic gay characters even rarer. So when HIV-positive Pedro Zamora came on The Real World: San Francisco, it truly broke new ground and opened minds across the country and around the world.

This year, MTV went back to the glory days of The Real World franchise, and told Pedro’s story again, in this made-for-television movie. Newcomer Alex Loynaz played Pedro in a screenplay written by none other than Oscar winner Dustin Lance Black.

It may seem odd, fictionalizing a character that we saw so much of in real life, but what’s important here is that the story is so relevant today. Too often people who are HIV positive are still hiding in the shadows, even as new infections are on the rise. Everywhere, even in the gay ghettos, people with the disease are stigmatized, and the open honest portrayal genuinely has the power to save lives.

Prayers for Bobby

As if making a TV movie for Lifetime, about a young gay man driven to suicide by his family's blind faith wasn’t enough of a tear jerker – they had to get the legendary Sigourney Weaver to portray Bobby’s mom as a woman on a path to redemption for her role in his death. And it lead to Scott Bailey, who starred as Bobby's boyfriend, to write a touching letter detailing how making the movie changed him

Lifetime is known for their movies, but not for their movies about gay kids and mothers dealing with them. But here, the network and those involved in making the movie, cut to the heart of America's intersection of gay issues with those of faith and religion. It was a brave move dealing with a heavy subject. The movie had both high and low points, but what no can deny is that it honored Bobby by hitting the emotional chords that moved almost everyone who saw it.

Torchwood: Children of Earth

There’s not a lot to say about this that hasn’t been discussed and argued to death here on AfterElton.com, and elsewhere. Russell T. Davies took us on a wild ride of action, and then discovery as Ianto tried to figure out what it meant to love Captain Jack. Then Mr. Davies reminded us that these were his toys, and broke them all over the carpet. And many people are still in mourning.

Say what you will about whether we were led on as to the nature of the relationship (and you have), but someone once said that if it evokes an emotional response, then it’s art. By that measure, Children of Earth was the frakking Mona Lisa.

That’s it – that’s all our categories, and all our nominees. Who’d we forget? Who are you rooting for? Let us know in the comments, and we’ll let you know who wins on Thursday, September 17^th. Then join us for our Emmy livechat on Sunday, September 20.

Submitted by

AfterElton.com Staff

on Thu, 2009-09-10 06:47.

Question about voting

Submitted by

T.W. (600 points) (122 posts)

on Wed, 2009-09-09 22:39.

I wanted to verify that voting is open for everyone, including the women on the site. It seems that way, but I don't want to mess up the process.

And decisions, decisions...

no votes

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