Eleven for '11: Gay TV, Movies, Music and More You Won't Want to Miss This Year!!

I love this time of year when the pop culture slate is clean and we don't know what the year will bring. Yes, 2011 stretches before us a glittering, unblemished frontier of gay pop culture to be filled with moments like Glee's version of "Teenage Dream" or Neil Patrick Harris and David Burtka becoming daddies.

Well, unblemished except for Ramin Setoodeh who couldn't even wait one week before shooting off his fool mouth again.

Ignoring Ramin, to help launch us into 2011 like a flock of graceful swans in flight, here are eleven of the year's pop culture items most making us wriggle with anticipation!

1) Shameless — debuts January 9th

Cameron Monaghan (center) as Ian Gallagher

Remakes of British series are notoriously tricky to pull off. All the proof we need of that is what Hollywood did to Britain's Coupling, one of the funniest sitcoms of all time. And remaking Shameless, a raunchy, comedy set in a rundown area of Manchester and featuring what might be the most dysfunctional family ever, would seem far more difficult to pull off than remaking a simple sitcom.

Yet, having seen the first three episodes of Showtime's remake of Shameless, I can say they managed to pull it off, perhaps not flawlessly, but certainly successfully enough that it should land squarely on the list of shows you should check out.

And gay fans should be especially interested as Shameless gives us Ian Gallagher (Cameron Monaghan), yet another gay teen who is as interesting and complicated as anyone on the show.

2) Archer — returns January 27th

Ray Gillette, lower left hand corner

This is actually the second season of the animated FX spy comedy, but this season out agent Ray Gillette (Adam Reed) gets elevated to recurring status. The show was already pretty fast and furious with the gay jokes, not to mention a few hot homoerotic moments, but if I'm reading between the lines correctly, the season's fifth episode, "The Double Deuce," might just mean another character is a switch hitter.

There is definitely nothing politically correct about this show, but with a gay character part of the mix we get to part of the joke and not the butt of the joke.

3) Ricky Martin's Music + Soul + Sex — releases February 1st

The Latin Crooner already released the first single, "The Best Thing About Me is You," a duet with Joss Stone. That song didn't exactly set things on fire, but "Shine" the second single has found a more receptive audience.

Might M+S+S include a same-sex long long? We'll find out shortly, but either way we know we're excited to sample Ricky's work as an out gay artist!