Why I don't believe God hates gay people

San Francisco is still there.

You get these “Christian” evangelical types banging on about how various illnesses, natural disasters, voting trends and the like are evidence that God is punishing the Western world for our tolerance of LGBTQ+ communities. The thing is, though, that you probably won't find a city more vital to the history of LGBTQ+ people in the modern, Western world than San Francisco.

San Francisco is on a fault line. There is a very real risk that at any moment the city will be hit by “The Big One” which will not so much level as sink the entire city and a large portion of the rest of California with it.

Yet it is still there. The city of Harvey Milk and Armistad Maupin.

That's either one hell of an oversight or He's fine with us, is what I'm saying. 

Conversations we need to have (but can't because of bastards)

I really wish we could talk about men. There are a whole bunch of conversations I think we, as a society, need to have about men and masculinity. We need to talk about particular stigmas of diagnosing mental health issues in men (we are massively under-diagnosed for disorders and conditions that make us more aggressive because that's apparently just how we're meant to be whilst women are massively under-diagnosed for conditions that make them more passive because same).

We need to talk about how young men and boys are literally not taught how to talk about our emotions. I mean, we are just not taught the language and that has to have an effect on the suicide rate.

We need to talk about how funny some men get about physical contact. How we will literally shy away from each other and how that's not only rooted in unconscious homophobia but also as a manifestation of how we're not meant to connect with each other.

We need to have a lot of conversations about fatherhood. There's that distance again, that lack of contact and emotional honesty. Its a vicious cycle of fathers not being taught how to talk about or deal with their emotions and then passing that

There are health issues that have to be discussed. Not only the peculiarities of certain mental health issues but also the fact that prostate cancer is very rarely discussed in spite of being the second most common kind after skin cancer. And things might have improved since I was at school but there were a lot of sexual health and hygiene issues that weren't fully broached, though this was true of both genders. 

But having these conversations is difficult because once you try to have a serious conversation about men and our place in an evolving society some bloody retrograde “Men's Rights Activist” will butt into the conversation yelling blue murder if you so much as suggest that maybe masculinity needs to change with society.

Superman's a sub (and its canon)

(Just a warning, this post involves what my grandmother called “people getting up to naughties” or sexual content as the rest of us would say, if you didn't guess that from the title).

Do you have a "nerdy thing" that you love see people discover more than you like the thing itself?

For me, I love when people discover that Joe Shuster, the original Superman artist, had such a small repertoire of character models that he recycled Clark Kent and Lois Lane for his BDSM art. I love the reactions to that one.

Lois is usually the Domme in Schuster's BDSM art, by the way. which as far as I'm concerned makes them canon compliant with the DC Universe.

I mean, every decent version of Lois Lane starts out as an older (slightly like in Smallville or considerably like in Superman The Movie), more experienced, guiding mentor to Clark that he is most attracted to when she is in the process of taking no shit whatsoever. Smallville Clark in particular actually smiles when she tells him off (when he deserves it, which is often).

So, yeah, Superman is a bit subby and this is intended by the original creators.

The only problem I will ever have with homosexuality

Pronouns.

Goddamn pronouns! It drives you mad. You're taught at school to establish who's speaking and present with names and then move on to “he”, “her” and so on so as not to test your reader's patience.

Then you write a scene with a gay couple and suddenly there's all this bloody ambiguity about which partner is doing what. You can't even do the physical characteristics thing like “the redhead did this”, “the brunette did that” because that's so impersonal and doesn't suit an intimate scene and is even more, even longer bloody words.

So instead you end up naming people every other line.

I know there's a lot of debate about language and sexuality and gender these days and maybe we don't need to add another layer to the whole thing but maybe we should, as a society, get on this.

You know, not just for my own selfish needs, just mainly. 

On, um... coming events

One advantage of finally being settled in the new place is I have time to catch up on the huge stack of comics that have accumulated in the last month and a bit. The advantage of that is it means I finally have some content for the blog I originally set up to be about comics!

It's funny what catches the eye as a good subject for a post. Take this snippet from Starfire #8...

… and, yeah, I may be 1,000 words into an essay analysing a masturbation gag. It isn't even a joke essay, this really did help crystallise a whole bunch of issues concerning Starfire's sexuality that I wanted to discuss into sharp relief.

I just read that last sentence back and I didn't mean it like that. I really didn't. I'm sorry. 

Bear Grylls, pornography and Chyna's Hall Of Fame ring

(I was on a certain amount of medication when I wrote this last night but I think there's the ghost of a point here.)

It seems that Bear Grylls has announced his first gay porn role...

Now, personally, I don't believe we should think less of him for this. He's a knowledgeable and talented man, informative and articulate. There are people in this world alive because of his (non-sex industry work). However, there's this terrible and totalising stigma attached to “oh, this person did porn once” or “they posed nude once” or “they're a former sex worker” and it is utterly mad.

Think about it: there are basically two options here concerning sex work. Either the person did it by their own free choice, in which case you and I have no right to judge that. Their body, their choice, that's a really central tenet of how modern society works (or should be). Option two is that the person was in some way exploited, in which case attaching stigma to it is morally revolting victim blaming.

So I guess what I'm really saying is PUT CHYNA IN THE WWE HALL OF FAME, YOU COWARDLY BASTARDS!

Yeah, she's done some porn. You know what she also did? First (of only two) women to take part in the Royal Rumble; first and only woman to win the Intercontinental Championship; first female bodyguard character in the WWE (WWF as it was then); she was a bodybuilder in the Women's Division during an era when fake tits and blonde hair were basically the uniform, making her just as much a breath of fresh air as Daniel Bryan or Mick Foley; she was part of one of the Attitude Era's best stables in D-Generation X.

And she's not in the Hall Of Fame because she had sex on camera?

Now, I like Mean Gene Okerlund as much as the next man but if an announcer gets into the Hall Of Fame then one of the most transformative figures in women's wrestling deserves her place? 

Davros, Missy and Queerbaiting

In which Davros is useful for the first time since 1985, Michelle Gomez has me double-checking my pronouns, and Clara's sexuality gives me pause...

(Spoilers ahead for Doctor Who's ninth series première The Magician's Apprentice.)

I still haven't finished watching the back half of series eight so this is the first time I've seen Michelle Gomez as Missy. I'm... conflicted. You see, I like Missy just fine, she works well as a villainous presence, but what has me raising an eyebrow is how hard it is to see her as the Master.

This isn't a gender thing. I've wanted to see a woman play the Doctor for years and I'd be willing to bet this is as close as we'll be getting any time soon. There are moments when I see the Master there: when she disintegrates two men to prove she hasn't “turned good” and, of course, the glorious moment towards the end of the episode where she realises where they've ended up and how bad things are. There really is nothing more “Master” than the whole plan collapsing around them. And that little scheme with the planes is as convoluted and pointless as anything Delgado or Ainley's incarnations ever pulled.

So what's the problem? Well, for a start, I want to admit that it is probably my problem and less to do with the writing, it might even be something utterly necessary to selling this character as the Master to a general audience who have never seen Delgado or Ainley.

You see, I just never liked the Simm version of the Master and Missy is very much written to match his zaniness. The Master to me swings between detached cool and homicidal rage, I can't quite buy comedy accents from the character.

Davros, meanwhile, is the best he's been since Revelation Of The Daleks in 1985. What this story has over The Stolen Earth/Journey's End (and Remembrance, for that matter) is that it remembers Davros is a scientist. He has a cool non-Dalek henchman who is clearly one of his genetic experiments and we get another in the long list of chatty confrontations between the Doctor and Davros. “Did you miss our conversations?” Davros asks and, in all honesty, I did. I also like that throughout this episode he's kept separate from the Daleks which is how he's always worked best. These two, polar opposites in morality but united by their profession as scientists act as great foils for one another, arguably better than the Doctor and the Master.

So, effusive praise for a good episode mired only by some personal issues with the series' ongoing use of the Master?

Well, no, there's one other issue. It's an issue that's been hanging over Clara in particular and the Moffat era in general for a while now and one that this episode probably imagines it's helping to solve.

You see, Clara has a line here pretty much confirming her bisexuality. Now, this isn't out of the blue and that's been a problem in some quarters. The first duplicate Clara, Oswin Oswald, was bi (or possibly just forgetful) and whether that was a trait inherited from the original has been an open question since Clara's introduction proper. Here she mentions how good a kisser Jane Austen was and, yes, we have a canon bisexual companion. Yay?

Ish...

You see, something that has dogged Moffat's Doctor Who is that when he took over from Russell T. Davies there were suddenly a lot fewer queer characters in the series. I'm not personally inclined to interpret malice on Moffat's part since he and Davies have different creative obsessions and, yes, one of Davies' is sexuality. Once the problem was pointed out to Moffat we got Jenny and Vastra and now canon bisexual Clara.

Still, it is only a mention and part of me raises an eyebrow and wonders if I'm being queerbaited here. Now, I'm the last person to look at a bisexual character and say they're imperfect for not sleeping with anything in sight, truth be told that trope bugged me long before I had reason to find it personally offensive. Still, I wonder how much latitude there would be for Clara to be shown in a relationship with a woman. Would the BBC ever allow the series to show her making sloppy kisses with Jane Austen (get those fan fictions beta'd by Friday AO3!)? She kissed Danny Pink plenty of times but the idea of her with a woman has to remain an idea.

Perhaps I'm just being ornery but this tiny mention smacks of fanservice more than character development. When Clara's character is actively informed by her bisexuality then I'll be cheering it on. Not necessarily a relationship or anything sexual, just some evidence that this is more than a bit of sly titillation. 

Coming Out In Comics: Catwomen

(SPOILERS like crazy for Catwoman #39)

A little more than a month ago I made a post about how I think Harley Quinn should come out. We, and by “we” I mean a definition of fandom that includes her current writers, see her as bisexual already so I argued that future writers could simply write her that way in explicit terms without having to have her “come out” as such. Yes, coming out stories and queer issue stories are important ones to tell, especially for people experiencing similar situations in their own lives, but I felt it could be equally important to have a major character expressing a queer sexuality without it being treated as an issue.

When I wrote it I felt like I was positing some distant future when the current generation of fandom starts running the asylum as is the natural cycle of things.

Then DC only went and bloody did that exact thing with Catwoman!

from Catwoman #39 (written by Genevieve Valentine,

art by Garry Brown, colours by Lee Loughridge)

Click to embiggen.

Whilst this scene doesn't exactly come out of nowhere, it did completely blindside me. Up until this point you could have read Selina's relationship with Eiko Hasigawa as almost entirely confrontational. Eiko has taken the Catwoman identity while Selina becomes a mob boss. Eiko admires Selina and takes her old identity out of respect, though Selina explicitly resents the idea that Eiko clearly sees it as a heroic legacy instead of a criminal one. True, there were one or two moments that looked like Selina was flirting but Selina flirts with everyone, or at least she did before the weight of this new role forced her to a more sober maturity.

So when Eiko asks “Was that for me, or the suit?” it has certain connotations. Anyone who is familiar with Catwoman recognises her as an intensely sexual being. There was a time in the fifties, after the Comics Code was introduced, where DC dropped the character entirely for fear she was too sexual, only reintroducing her when the Adam West TV show demonstrated she could be used in a “family friendly” way. There has been, literally since her first appearance which ends with Batman threatening to spank her, at least a touch of BDSM imagery to almost every version of her.

So let's talk about the possibility Selina is kissing the suit before we talk about the fact she may be kissing Eiko (Selina, after all, effectively shelves the issue for later exploration).

The Catwoman suit is a fetish object. Various versions of it have been slinky dresses, skintight spandex and what is now either latex or leather depending on the colourist; its most enduring accessory is a whip; that's why you or I or any outside observer would view it in those terms. What's important here is that the suit is a fetish object to Selina and Eiko.

In no particular order the Catwoman suit and identity represent freedom, rebellion, anonymity and power to both women. Selina is a self-confessed loner (there seems to be no equivalent of Holly in The New 52 continuity) uncomfortable with relying on others who is now responsible for the entire Calabrese crime family, a role she inherited by blood and has no other practical claim on or qualifications for. She is being constantly second guessed and questioned by her subordinates, few of whom she is genuinely close to and one she was close to she was forced to order killed for snitching to the police. She hasn't worn the Catwoman suit for the length of Valentine's run and uses her gymnastic abilities sparingly, only when she is directly threatened (such as her recent dust-up with Julia Pennyworth in Batman Eternal).

She's also been notably celibate since Valentine started writing her. The sense that Selina is actively repressing every instinct that previously defined her is palpable.

Eiko meanwhile is the daughter of Gotham's yakuza boss with all the responsibilities and personal repressions classically associated with the role. She's also been cost family: her father forced her to choose between sending her second cousin Ken back to Japan or having him lose his little finger for failing to “protect” her. Her life is entirely defined by her father and the criminal enterprise she will almost certainly never inherit.

Given all of this there's something bizarrely narcissistic about this scene: they're both kissing the woman they want to be. On the other hand, you could equally say that they're both kissing Catwoman, the identity they both see as the full expression of their true selves, their ultimate empowered form and there are few more positive sexual actions than the expression of true self, which is what any coming out scene should be. 

999 Shades of Grey

Today the 50 Shades Of Grey film comes out, just in time for Valentine's Day. Now, I thought I'd get a post out the rather inept moral panic building across Facebook but it seems there's greater comedy to be had.

The London Fire Brigade and, one assumes, others across the country, have briefed their officers to expect a huge rise in callouts for people trapped in handcuffs, ropes and other ill-chosen attempts to re-enact scenes from the film. This isn't unexpected, but the BBC news article about it lists similar incidents the LFB have been called out for including, goodness knows why, a buy getting his penis trapped in a toaster.

I want to know but I don't want to know, if you get my drift.

As to my opinion on 50 Shades itself? I haven't read it, every woman I work with has and none of them have managed to put together a recommendation that makes me want to read it. The Metro review yesterday had a failed climax joke as a headline and a couple other reviews basically mumble about it being better than the book but compare it unfavourably to Secretary (there are lots of papers ion the canteen). I'm aware the book has some issues with its treatment of consent, hard limits and personal safety (or so I'm told) but I'm also aware that BDSM fantasy and reality can often be quite separate, the one being a performance of the other. So long as people know 50 Shades is a fantasy and not a totally realistic portrayal of BDSM that's fine. Problem being of course that, like the Fire Brigade, I know there will always be idiots.

I will probably end up watching it, if only because numerous female friends will insist on it to embarrass me. I won't actually be embarrassed but a surprising number of people see me as some sort of innocent who will be shocked by sexuality. It is so much fun disabusing them of this.

Even the toaster thing didn't shock me so much as baffle me. 

In defense of lady Ghostbusters

A few days ago casting was announced for the all-female Ghostbusters reboot or remake or reimagining (Hollywood really has to start separating out those words again) and there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth on the internet. There seems to be this feeling amongst certain sections of the community that there's something inherently traitorous about the whole idea. I don't really see it myself but there are some interesting things to be untangled from it all so let's start.

The main reason the idea doesn't bother me is it strikes me that if Ghostbusters were a totally new and original idea in 2015 instead of a remake of a classic it might have an all-female cast anyway. Not because of “social justice” or anything like that but because that's the sort of film it would be based off the same way the original was based on the not uncommon comedy trope of a bunch of guys starting a business together and muddling through with (ahem) hilarious consequences. These days all-female or female-led comedies are a staple of the genre doing the same trick with attractive professional women instead of (with all respect to the classic Ghostbusters cast) a bunch of blokes at the more marginally photogenic end of fuck ugly. This new Ghostbusters is the old idea if it were the logical extension of, say, Sex In The City or Ally McBeal with added ghosts.

Then there's the accusation, very common on the internet, that this sort of remake ruins one's childhood. I must admit to having never understood that one. I admit it isn't pleasant to see something you loved in your youth remade badly but the almost-orthodontic experience of watching The Amazing Spider-Man doesn't invalidate or erase the pleasure I got watching Sam Raimi's first two efforts.

I'm tempted to make a point about how both pleasure and pain are of the moment in your memory, but that might be a bit too spiritual for a post headed by a picture of Slimer.

Will they make Slimer female? I hope they use Slimer, I saw the cartoon long before the actual films so as far as I'm concerned he's as much core cast as Egon Spengler. Hard design to feminise so I suppose there'll still be some Guy Power in the old fire station. As a complete aside, there's a Hindu temple here in Reading that looks just like the Ghostbusters fire station.

Disconnected mental meanderings aside I am quietly hopeful for this remake (or whatever) for the simple reason it seems to want to do something different with its core concept. I'm a bit down on the whole remake concept these days: The Amazing Spider-Man missed the point catastrophically; the new Fantastic Four looks incredibly bland; and Star Trek Into Darkness was about nothing, which is a criminal misuse of the Star Trek name. The reboot thing now seems to be just about making more of a popular thing instead of using old ideas to make new statements as with, for instance, the rebooted Battlestar Galactica which took the core concept and extended it out to comment on a whole bunch of political concepts like terrorism, reproductive rights and religious fundamentalism that the original wouldn't have dared touch.

By going all-female and therefore switching out one set of comedy tropes for another, I have some hope these Ghostbusters will be saying something new for themselves and maybe entertainment will happen along the way. 

Context and the bisexual Avatar

(Spoiler warning for the series finale of Legend Of Korra)

I've just started watching the third season of Legend Of Korra, thanks to the generosity of the internet since Nickolodean has an almost HBO-esque inability to release timely DVDs. Anyway, I'm doing this after the end of season four was spoilered for me by the whole of tumblr going crazy about it. Not that I blame them, this was a biggie.

So I'm going into watching these final two seasons knowing who Korra walks off into the sunset with. This means I have a context for things denied the audience at first transmission, especially given the creators' insistence that they intended to develop Korra and Asami's relationship towards a romantic conclusion since somewhere in the planning phase of season three.

Anyway, I just watched the episode where Asami tries to teach Korra to drive. The two of them are sitting in Asami's car and each confesses to the other that they kissed Mako whilst the other was dating him (long story and if you don't know it then, seriously, watch this series its great). After they have this off their chests Korra tells Asami's she glad they're still fine as growing up as sheltered as she did she's never had a girlfriend before...

… and God help me but the moment Korra says that Asami has a look of shock on her face, I'm sure of it. I was aware of the moment in question because of some fanfic I read but I assumed it was just the sort of moment 'shippers grab onto regardless of authorial intent (and ain't nothin' wrong with that) but it really does look like Asami's internal monologue is going “Girlfriend? She said girlfriend! Oh spirits, I wish, but she blatantly means 'friend who is a girl'... I'm glad she's driving or I'd have crashed the car when she said that...”.

I wonder what else I'll notice on the way to these two ladies walking off into the sunset/spirit world. 

Should Harley Quinn ever come out?

Before we go off to the races let's establish where the starting blocks are. For the purposes of this post let's assume that Harley Quinn is definitely, canonically bisexual: that every joke and innuendo in print and on screen the last twenty-plus years has been made in earnest; that the scene in Harley & Ivy where they seem to be sharing a double bed is not about lacking rent money; and that Harley isn't just being catty when she takes note of Power Girl's curves in Harley Quinn #11.

So, for our purposes today it is 100% established fact that Harley is bi and that at one time at least she and Poison Ivy were lovers. All clear?

Okay, so this was all kicked off by someone telling me Batwoman was cancelled. Between that, the continued absence of Renee Montoya in the New 52 and Alan Scott's increasing backgrounding in the Earth 2 titles that leaves Harley as the only headlining queer character DC has and she's not even out.

But does she need to be?

Let me be clear: queer characters who are out? Good and definitely needed, should be more of them. The Batwoman title in particular will be sorely missed. What I'm arguing here is that perhaps the current portrayal of Harley's queerness has some value in and of itself beyond fun innuendo.

I should like at this stage to point out that whilst I don't view Harley as “out” I don't view her as closeted, especially under her current writers Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti. Anyone who has read their Power Girl run or Painkiller Jane (most any of their work, really) knows that these are creators who are very comfortable with sex as a subject. As creators they proceed from the idea that sex and sexuality are major parts of the adult human psychology and they're unafraid to tackle that. In Painkiller Jane the main character's bisexuality is a simple fact portrayed as attraction completely divorced from gender (according to Palmiotti) whilst their Power Girl directly addresses the fact of her physicality and how it is perceived by her and others.

With Harley they mainly address her sexuality with jokes. Yes, they're presented as Easter Eggs for fans but there's nothing particularly subtle about them (one of them's a beaver joke, for goodness sake!) but I like it because its not presented as an issue at all, just a fact of Harley's personality. It helps that they've reverted her to the carefree, often childlike Harley from before the New 52: no impulse control, no baggage, no sense of limits and because we're talking about the writers we are that attitude informs how her sexuality is represented. Even if we took Harley to be bi (and we are today, remember) I honestly don't think she would ever feel the need or desire to identify that way, or any way, it just isn't her.

It would be easy for me to segue here into one of those tangents about how we don't need labels and I would like that to be the world we lived in (I do, it must be admitted here, identify with one of the... less choosy sexualities and am therefore biased) but on the macro scale I think that's generations off. For the time being, a period probably far longer than our lifetimes, labels serve an important purpose whilst we sort out the social issues surrounding them and probably will continue to serve a purpose long after.

But in this one case whilst we have characters like Batwoman, Bunker and Alan Scott proudly identifying and representing perhaps it serves an equally useful purpose for there to be a bisexual character to whom sexuality is not an issue at all. There's something beautifully Utopian about this carefree, anarchic spirit not even acknowledging genders and labels or even really the need to.

Right now, I admit, its just jokes but I honestly believe one day someone will write an explicitly queer Harley. After all, she's gone from straight to implicitly bisexual on the strength of little more than fan 'shipping entering the mainstream. One day the next generation of fans will take over and to them Harley will just be bisexual. When that day comes I just hope they continue with Harley's sexuality in its present context, that it just is; not an issue to her; not a source of internal conflict; its just her; don't use the labels and just show it in action.

Because of the character's history DC has a chance to present a queer character whose sexuality isn't a revelation on any level because for two decades various levels of authorial intent are on their side. Not even in the “plausible deniability” vein of Comics Code era characters like Northstar where it was a matter of censorship, here its a perfectly natural act of literary evolution. 

A redemptive reading of Up Pompeii

Up Pompeii is one of my favourite bits of comfort food television. It's fun, frothy, undemanding and funny. It is also a classic example of the 1970s tits-and-bum farce model of comedy: sexist jokes, heaving bosoms, short skirts, tacit approval of male promiscuity whilst disapproving of the same behaviours in women and everything moderated purely towards the male gaze.

You can understand why this would be problematic. This is not an admirable piece of work as I've described it, in fact liking it goes against more than a few of my personal politics. So I've decided to adopt a redemptive reading of the series and it is this: it is actually quite subversive in its use of sexuality.

The format of the series is thus: it is 79BC and Frankie Howerd plays Roman slave Lurcio, your typical sex comedy protagonist: randy, lascivious and utterly incapable of getting his end away despite going to hugely convoluted lengths to seduce women. He is owned by a similarly sex-obsessed family: lecherous Senator Ludicrus Sextus (Max Adrian in season one, Wallace Eaton in season two), his similarly unfaithful wife Ammonia (Elizabeth Larner) and their children the fey, virginal Nausius (Kerry Gardner) and breathless, poly-amorous daughter Erotica (Georgina Moon). The average episode involves Lurcio and at least one other of these characters trying to have sex with someone then being thwarted by circumstances and/or the intervention of the other characters, “hilarity ensues”, you know the form.

So far so conventional. Series writer Talbot Rothwell actually wrote the lion's share of the Carry On films so the tits-and-bums approach isn't that much of a surprise. The redemptive reading comes from the lead actors:

Frankie Howerd and Max Adrian were gay, you see, and this would not have been unknown to Rothwell. Neither of them may have been out in the modern sense but neither were closeted in their professional lives. Adrian himself was out to the acting world at least as early as 1965 (when his orientation caused some friction on the set of the Doctor Who story The Myth Makers, in which he was excellent, by the way).

So what we have is a series anchored by two homosexual men (at least in the first season) acting out the worst stereotypes of heterosexual men for laughs. They are also shown to fail constantly, which is the point of farce: the narrative is both on their side by presenting them as the heroes of the piece and against them because it is forever making them suffer. Add to this the fact that Nausius can easily be read as closet gay (“Yes, they had them in those days, too,” Howerd confides to camera before reading the first of Nausius' many awful odes) or in denial: constantly pursuing woman but with no idea what to do with them on the rare occasions they don't tell him to sod off.

The thing is that Nausius is actually quite a nice, sensitive person. This being a farce that means he is almost always cast as a foil either to his father or to Lurcio in some scheme or other (including the compulsory crossdressing subplot when the two older men need to find a vestal virgin in a hurry) but of all the characters in the show he is the only one who ever acts heroically. There are a couple of episodes that have him disapprove of slavery and one where he even frees two slaves (woman, naturally, that he has “fallen in love with”). He's also very open about his feelings when the rest of his family are constantly lying to and cheating on each other.

So we have a comedy about two morally bankrupt straight men where the narrative constantly punishes them for their actions and the only character who treats women at all as people (even if incompetently) is the only one who can be read as gay.

That's a reading I can live with and that settled I can sit back, relax and enjoy the more obvious good points of the series: Howerd's rambling monologues; Willie Rushton's heavenly interjections as Plautus; Max Adrian's gasping; the terrible odes (“get ready for it...”); the anachronisms (“... and if that doesn't win a BAFTA, nothing will!”); and, yes, if am honest, the dresses Elizabeth Larner has been poured into (inefficiently, if you get my drift).

“Greetings, good citizens. The prologue...”