It has taken me a while to discover this show - surprising perhaps given its impact but better late than never - and given a recent discussion I got into on Facebook, it is very appropriate that I discover it now.
It was always my concern (at various time at the back of or forefront of my mind), that something like this would be at both somewhat/excessively ‘soapy’ and too conscious of its ‘message for these times’ Now while there are certainly soapy moments they are by no means excessive - and it is fun to wallow in them periodically - the impact of the series has been wonderful. It’s a gripping and often very moving picture of a world about which I, in a general sense, had heard of but had no deep knowledge of. I had a while ago seen the recently restored documentary, Paris is Burning that covers the same area and my sense is certainly that this series has rightly taken the whole historical concept and events and done it wonderful and powerful justice. The other and perhaps the greatest strength of it has been that a vast number of the performers are trans/gay etc. etc. and so have lived and had experiences - and for so many to have the chance of high exposure, for many at the start of their performing careers is utterly marvellous.
The various story strands are very well put together and integrated with their intertwining being given an effectively structured balance so that all groups and individuals are of equal importance - there is a great sense of being let into a community that, when active, could, and had to be, only known to those who took part. But this sense of being ‘inside’ a distinct community is not in the least cheaply exploitative and there is a marvellous compassion and understanding shown in the writing in giving us the powerful picture of what these people had to endure and how centrally important these ‘Houses’ were to those who really were utterly rejected by the whole world and their society. They are not sentimentalised. Due to their exxperiences they had to become often hard and harsh but this aspect of them is shown superbly well - as I said by the writing and the performances.
It’s a very salutary reminder to us all of what life was like for many - but at the back of ones mind too, of course, there is the question of what life was like for, and what happened to, those who did or could not share in that world. This was very powerfully shown in the documentary Paris is Burning of course. But this series, to use the language of the MC ‘serves realness’.
So a gripping experience - and watching it with someone in their 20’s it has also provided an eye-opening history of our kind which we must never forget.