It’s Gay Season Again in the UK

At the beginning of August, I wrote an article reviewing a rather disappointing ‘gay season’ which the UK’s Channel 4 had been running to commemorate 40 years since the decriminalization of gay sex in England and Wales. The actual date of the change in the law was 28 July 1967.

Last week, the more highbrow digital channel BBC Four ran its own ‘gay season’ to commemorate a slightly different landmark in gay history: the publication of the Wolfenden Report on 3 September 1957. It was this report, and its recommendations with respect to homosexuality, which ten years later led to a change in the law regarding gay men.

Titled ‘Hidden Lives’, the BBC Four season proved to be much more intelligent and in-depth, as well as less sensational, than the Channel 4 season. Although much of the programming came from the BBC archives rather than being new, the wide range of style and subject matter meant that there was probably something for all gay viewers.

With four or five interesting shows a night for a week, the quantity on offer was actually rather overwhelming - I wished the season had been more spaced out, so that I had had time and energy to watch everything.

There were documentaries covering gay and lesbian life in Britain throughout the twentieth century. There were fact-based dramas with gay characters, and archive footage of important moments in gay history (including the press conference from 1957, where Sir John Wolfenden discussed his recently published report on what were then called ‘homosexual offences’).

There were programs on the lives of gay and bisexual men as diverse as mathematician Alan Turing, Soviet spy Guy Burgess, playwright Joe Orton, comic actors Frankie Howerd and Kenneth Williams, musicians Liberace, George Melly and Joe Meek, fashion designer Leigh Bowery, television personality Gilbert Harding, and ‘The Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein.

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The night of Saturday 8 September also saw a range of shows dedicated to celebrating the 50th birthday of Stephen Fry this year. You can view interview clips with Fry, as well as a photographic retrospective of his career, here.
[img_assist|nid=8765|title=|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=175|height=131]To me, one of the real highlights of the season was the chance to see early, rarely-screened films with gay characters, such as the American political thriller Advise and Consent (1962), the British social-realist drama The Leather Boys (1964), and the Quentin Crisp biopic The Naked Civil Servant (1975).

The Leather Boys, in particular, provided a fascinating example of a masculine gay character portrayed with humanity and dignity at a time when gay male sex was still illegal. Dudley Sutton, who played the role of the biker, Pete, who is quietly in love with his best male friend, has said that:

"It was a risky part to take, but then I was very political and, although I am not gay myself, I really did care about the trouble my gay friends were having. People were being put in prison, beaten up, blackmailed, so when that job came up I thought, 'I'm going to play it as a man who is in love, not a flapping, limp-wristed camp thing that everyone can laugh at.'"

The chance to see such a thoughtful and comparatively progressive film, made so early, was just one of the great opportunities provided by this excellent season.