The L Word is back - and Generation Q is already up for top LGBTIA+ awards

The L Word: Generation Q, nominated for a 2020 Queerty Award for Best TV Series and a GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Drama Series, is now streaming first on Showmax.

A reboot of the groundbreaking, Emmy-nominated 2004-2009 series The L Word, Generation Q has an 82% critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes, where the critics consensus says the eight-episode first season “has style and charm to spare and announces a new phase for The L Word that will please new and old fans alike.” As Slate says, there’s “much to love in Generation Q, a glossy, bighearted show that's less soapy than the original series but delivers enough secrets, sex, and secret sex to keep the stakes high.”

Golden Globe nominee Jennifer Beals (Flashdance, Swamp Thing), Kate Moennig (Ray Donovan, Grown-ish) and Leisha Hailey (Bosch, Silicon Valley) reprise their much-loved roles as Bette, Shane and Alice respectively, and also executive produce Generation Q alongside original series co-creator Ilene Chaiken, who went on to win an Emmy as an executive producer on The Handmaid’s Tale.

As The New York Times puts it, “Before The L Word, lesbian characters barely existed in television... Showtime's decision in January 2004 to air The L Word, which follows the lives of a group of fashionable Los Angeles lesbians, was akin to ending a drought with a monsoon. Women who had rarely seen themselves on the small screen were suddenly able to watch lesbian characters not only living complex, exciting lives, but also making love in restaurant bathrooms and in swimming pools.”

The reboot has been a long time coming. “Part of the reason we felt so emboldened to bring this back, was because there was nothing that ever took its place”, Moennig said in a cast interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “You’d think that in the ten years we were off the air, there would be.”

“It was exciting to have that amount of time go by,” Beals tells The Hollywood Reporter, “because you have this new generation that’s come up, that refuses to be categorised, that is insistent on self-identifying both gender and sexual orientation. That’s really exciting, to have these new conversations. When any generation can start completely changing the lexicon of how we talk about gender and how we talk about sexuality, you know that you’re in a really profound moment of change, and so I think it’s a perfect moment to come back.”

Alongside Bette, Shane and Alice, Generation Q introduces a whole new generation of diverse, self-possessed LGBTQIA+ characters to fall in love with.

“Max [Daniela Sea from The L Word] was the first trans man I had seen, you know, anywhere,” says Leo Sheng, who plays Micah in Generation Q, after making his screen debut in the Outfest winner Adam. “I’d only known a few trans women in my life and it just didn’t click that I could be... me, the way that makes me happy. So that had a huge impact on my life. It’s been such an honour to be part of that.”

Jacqueline Toboni (Jo in Easy, Trubel in Grimm) plays Sarah. Speaking to Moennig, Beals and Hailey as part of The Hollywood Reporter video interview, she says, “I was watching from the first season... sneaking it. I was such a huge fan. It’s really cool, you know: it sort of gave me the permission to dream of being an actor, seeing [you] three on TV.”

It’s a legacy the original cast is well aware of. “It means a lot to us to be helpful in that way,” Beals tells The Hollywood Reporter, “and what excites me is that now, you [Toboni and co] are the cast. Now, you will do that for somebody else.”

“When I was young, I had no representation on television,” Hailey tells The Hollywood Reporter. “I was always searching to find a connection on television or in movies and I just didn’t, so I get the impact that a show like this has. So I hope that it just continues for a long time, and I hope this isn’t the only show, in the end. I hope that people take our place when we’re done with this. I think there’s a vast landscape to fill.”

Watch the trailer:

Watch The L Word: Generation Q on Showmax: https://www.showmax.com/eng/tvseries/iy6ywd8b-the-l-word-generation-q.

Watch the first six seasons of The L Word on Showmax:
https://www.showmax.com/eng/tvseries/n9mbyldb-the-l-word

Other new LGBTQIA+ content on Showmax in May includes:

(S)he

While attempting to qualify for the 2016 Olympics for swimming, Penny, an intersex teenager, is forced to undergo gender treatment, while dealing with being ostracised by one of her teammates. (S)he is a coming-of-age drama that speaks to what it means to be a teenager, what it means to be accepted, and what it means to stand up for who you are.

Kate Roothman (Getroud Met Rugby, Erfsondes) stars as Penny, with Fleur du Cap nominee Kate Liquourish (Still Breathing, Queen Sono) as her coach and Justin Strydom (Snitch, The Mating Game, High Rollers) as her dad. Fiona Ramsay (Hard Copy), Mila Guy (Wonderlus) and Daniella Retief (Song vir Katryn) co-star.

Winner of Best Feature Film at Jozi Film Festival in 2019, (S)he is the feature film debut of Sean Steinberg, who also made the award-winning short Axis Mundi and wrote on hit series like The Girl From St Agnes and iNumber Number.

Drag SOS

Narrated by Golden Globe nominee Hugh Bonneville (Downton Abbey, Paddington 2), the quirky makeover show Drag SOS sees drag collective The Family Gorgeous help unlikely protégées unlock their long-lost confidence and become bolder, braver, drag-enhanced versions of themselves. Described by The Telegraph as a “British mix of Queer Eye and RuPaul’s Drag Race”, the show has an 80% critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes and 8.2/10 on IMDB.

Watch the trailer:

Katya: Help Me I’m Dying

“For those of you who have not yet had the dubious pleasure of making my acquaintance, hello. I am simply your average run of the mill Russian bisexual transvestite hooker,” says Katya Zamolodchikova in her first stand-up comedy special, just before acknowledging the cognitive dissonance her audience must be experiencing looking at “the spitting image of Michelle Pfeiffer” while listening to Borat. Katya won the 2020 Queerty Award for Drag Royalty and was voted Miss Congeniality on Season 7 of RuPaul’s Drag Race.

Trixie Mattel: Skinny Legend

Trixie Mattel, who won Season 3 of RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars, had a great year at the Queerty Awards in February, taking home Best Music Video for Yellow Cloud and Best Documentary for Trixie Mattel: Moving Parts. Now, in her Skinny Legend TV special, Trixie treats fans to just over an hour of her distinctive mix of music and comedy.

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