Russell T Davies: On Mainstreaming

At the beginning of Cucumber, someone says, “the whole world is a gay bar now,” Has the mainstreaming of gay culture made it harder to write shows about queer people?

There is a mainstreaming, and I think that’s magnificent. Certainly in Britain and in America, there are all sorts of gay stories cropping up. We will always complain that there could be more—it’s natural for a minority to complain that we’re not visible enough. At the same time, we’re getting more and more niche broadcasting, which demands shows for gay people, for middle-aged white women, for ethnic communities. We’re at a funny time of transition where no one’s quite sure if we’re searching for a mass audience or for niche audiences. In the end, though, people like a good story, and if you’re exploring characters that haven’t been explored in those ways before, then people will like that...

There are literal differences between our generations now. If you’re 20 years old, you are legal, you can marry, you’re on a completely equal legal footing. It’s not like I was closeted when I was young, but it was a different world. The generations keep on changing. At the same time, I wanted to explore how, actually, things don’t change that much. You’ve got equality. You can get married. The law’s on your side. That doesn’t make you happy. That’s never made straight teenagers happy. They can be white and wealthy, and they’re still not happy. So, I wanted to show that young, gay people are beleaguered by problems. They’re just as fantastically, hilariously full of problems as they’ve ever been...

Russell T Davies interviewed by Slate as Cucumber is finally shown in the States.