Finding queer content on television has never been easy, but it’s getting even harder now that streaming networks like Max, Disney+, Showtime and Hulu have begun cutting costs by completely removing various television shows and movies from their platforms altogether. Here are some of our gayest losses.
12 Dates of Christmas (Max)
This completely bananas dating show that shoehorned a Christmas theme into its little chalet of chaos had lesbian and gay contestants in Season Two, truly good luck figuring out how to watch this online!
Big Shot (Disney+)
A college basketball coach finds himself leading a girl’s high school team (obviously there is a lesbian) in this comedy you will never see
Camping (Max)
Curious about Bridget Everett as a butch lesbian named Harry in a cruel comedy where everybody is gay by the end? Well, you know what they say, “curiosity killed the cat.”
Diary of a Future President (Disney+)
We’ll never know now if she will be a president in the future
Dollface (Hulu)
If you want to see Shay Mitchell in a queer role you will have to do so somewhere else sorry
Genera+ion (Max)
Perhaps the greatest wound inflicted directly into the soul of our generation was the removal of this small gem of a super-queer Gen Z ensemble show.
Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies (Paramount+)
Those kids sang and danced for their lives and now nobody will ever see what they did!
Legendary (Max)
HBO Max ditched this voguing competition show but great news: you can watch it on Roku and Tubi.
Love Life (Max)
A rom-com anthology series with lesbians in both seasons and in the second season the lesbian is played by SNL legend Punkie Johnson sounds pretty fun but unfortunately it is not available to watch at this time.
The L Word: Generation Q (Showtime)
Liz Morris/SHOWTIME.
I mean we have discussed the injustice here!!!!!
Marvel’s Runaways (Hulu)
THIS SHOW RULED I’M SO SAD
Masters of Sex (Max)
Photo: Warren Feldman/SHOWTIME
Annaleigh Ashford plays a sex worker named Betty in this TV show about Masters & Johnson’s sex research but unfortunately you can’t watch it
Mrs. Fletcher (Max)
Kathryn Hahn as a middle-aged divorced Mom exploring her fluid sexuality and taking a writing class from Jen Richards sounds pretty fun, doesn’t it? Well, you can’t watch it.
Snowpiercer (Max)
A train goes round and round and round and now POOF it’s gone
Work in Progress (Showtime)
Cancelling this brilliant queer comedy was one thing but scrubbing it from Showtime altogether was an injustice.
Westworld (Max)
ok
Willow (Disney+)
Disney+”s Willow has “multiple queer characters to root for” but you can’t.
Y: The Last Man (Hulu)
This was in development for much longer than it was on actual television!
I knew about Genera+tion but not work in progress or camping!! I planned to watch those! Genuinely it’s inexplicable to me why they do this.
yeah i think now if you want to watch work in progress you have to buy the season on prime video! and camping is weird, like you can watch one episode for free but then the rest are unavailable altogether?
The prominent practice of early cancellations and now targeted removal by streamers besides NF means a lot of cool niche shows never finding their cult following.
Meanwhile, NF is becoming a graveyard of pointless, underdeveloped single-season narratives with no conclusions.
All around poor outcomes for original storytelling and a hurdle for new minority producers and showrunners coming to prominence.
The favored alternative strategy right now seems to be to produce sequels, prequels and universe expansions to existing IPs where the best queer bets are limited to Star Trek, SitC and TLW
All in the name of budgets, competitive advantages and merging prospects in the field of streaming services.
And so Millenial & Gen Z viewers wanting good representation and social commentary lose and removal of “Genera+ion” makes it a loss when it could have been the new “Skins” or “SKAM”.
Its producers Daniel and Zelda Barnes meant it was an American Gen Z teen show made with Gen Z teen input.
Specifically centering Genders & Sexualities Alliance students who believably embody Californian adolescents facing inexperience and confusion, dealing with family as dependents.
Who feel like young people still connecting the dots of their wants and needs.
Fortunately, it is now AVAILABLE for free on Tubi!
I think Netflix’s “Heartbreak High” centering an Aussie HS Sex Ed class is poised to deliver and deepen a similar viewing experience – if it’s given another 1-2 seasons.
Otherwise, time to check out BBC’s Channel 4, Canadian/Australian BC works, Spanish/Portuguese offerings.
In 3-5 years check in on Germans and hope that these fastidious Europeans employ a writers’ room, intimacy coaches and several directors in adapting “Euphoria.”
absolutely wild that big HBO vehicles like Westworld aren’t even on there anymore, honestly
right like, westworld was kind of a big deal
Some of these I already knew about in a deeply “Thanks. I hate it,” way. But others were on my “to watch” list, or even ones I was partway through watching. And many (if not most) aren’t available for purchase anywhere either!
The Willow removal pisses me off so much! I grew up with the movie and getting a very lesbian centric continuation was really phenomenal! I adored the show and planned to have it as a “comfort rewatch”. We just can’t have nice things :/
Me too! I’m close to buying a shady eBay blu-ray version of it and hope it works.
Right? And from a profits perspective, I wonder how much the companies lose out by not selling hard copies. I’d happily pay for a dvd with the show + a few behind the scenes features like in the good old days.
Removing content from streaming sites because they are too cheap to deal with residual payments and the like… don’t mind me, I’ll be setting sail on the high seas of the interwebs once again in search of “backup copies”. (VPN is highly recommended)
It feels like such a waste of all the energy, care, time, and money that went into these productions in the first place, from the writers to the actors and everyone behind the scenes.
Residuals aren’t that significant, are they?? I mean, isn’t that one (of many valid) reasons that streaming content is not very reliable, financially at least, for those that create it (writers, actors, etc)?
i do not think residuals are that significant, no! maybe for westworld, but for the rest of them… like i know they got rid of unpopular content, so if the content wasn’t popular how much could residuals have possibly been, you know? like did they just not want to have to bother printing and mailing the checks because that is like a whole level
especially for some of these smaller shows that only ran for one season, and are unpopular enough
yes, I’m so glad I caught genera+ion while it was available!
also work in progress was (is) so good
SO GOOD
Marvel’s Runaways is missing from this list. It was removed by Hulu a couple of weeks ago. I used to occasionally go and rewatch all the Deanoru (Nico/Karolina) scenes.
I saw an article that HBO is going to start putting shows on Netflix. But I expect NF would only want the really big shows like Westworld. It’s the same with the other streaming services – some of these shows will be licensed to run on them for a little while, but again, it’ll only be the big shows. :( Genera+ion was awesome and I don’t expect it ever to turn up again.
omg that’s so tragic, i loved marvel’s runaways!
TLW: Gen Q and Work in Progress are still on Crave in Canada.
We can now update this list to include Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies on Paramount+. Canceled today and will be removed in around a week. A show that literally JUST finished airing.
Omg I freaking loved Mrs. Fletcher. I streamed it illegally duh!!
I feel like I have to point out that all of these shows are probably easily available by pirating, which is something I think we’re all going to need to be more well versed in the way things are going! But yeah…this is just baffling to me. In what way does it help these streamers to remove content that has already been produced and released?!