That is a universal story, and not inherently queer – which makes it even more important that it is queer. Heartstopper’s recent resounding and well-deserved success is a clear testament to this: like Looking, Heartstopper doesn’t claim to tell the story of every gay person – just the tale of one warm and relatable first love.
Nowadays, queer stories are more mainstream and more diverse, and audiences are, in some ways, more forgiving. Even though its subject matter was sensitive, thoughtful and human, Looking couldn’t live up to the pressure. But Looking failed to land with both straight and queer audiences: mainstream audiences shied away from its queerness, despite the broad appeal of its subject matter, while queer audiences took aim at the show’s pedestrian subject matter, and its failure as the “great gay show” to represent the full gamut of gay experience. In 2015, Looking was touted as the next “ great gay show”, after the early noughties’ success of Queer As Folk, which may have overshadowed its reception.
