I Kissed A Boy and the history of LGBT dating shows
- Published
From There's Something About Miriam to I Kissed A Boy, LGBT dating shows have completely transformed in the last 20 years.
I Kissed A Boy on BBC Three is the first-ever British all gay male dating show.
Hosted by Dannii Minogue, the show begins with five couples, each of which meet by sharing a kiss. There are dramatic kiss-offs, in which the cast has to decide to stay with their current partner or save their kiss for someone else, as well as a batch of new ‘Heartstopper’ cast members who join the show. After eight episodes, the remaining couples decide whether to commit to each other in a romantic ceremony in front of their friends and family.
The show has been praised by critics for its inclusive and positive treatment of gay love. The Guardian praised the show for showing a “variety of body types” and called it “thrilling” to see a dating show featuring all men. Dazed called the show “real gay life, laid bare on television.”
I Kissed A Boy comes at the end of 20 years of British dating shows featuring LGBT contestants. This history begins with a number of controversial shows that have been criticised for the way those cast members have been depicted. Throughout the 2010s, LGBT people started to appear more frequently on TV dating shows, leading to the UK’s first all-male dating show in I Kissed A Boy (and soon its first all-female one in I Kissed A Girl).
‘The show rewarded a gay man with £100,000 for being non-effeminate’
In the early 2000s, same-sex adoption and civil partnerships were legalised, while the Section 28 law preventing local authorities from discussing LGBT matters was repealed.
Reality TV had also shown that straight viewers could support LGBT contestants. Big Brother had its first gay winner in Brian Dowling in 2001, and its first transgender winner in Nadia Almada in 2004.
Into this climate came the first two UK dating shows with LGBT themes. In February 2004, There’s Something About Miriam aired on Sky One, in which six men romanced a woman who was revealed to be transgender at the end of the series. The men sued the production company, and the case settled for an undisclosed fee, external. Miriam Rivera died in 2019.
Miriam Rivera was one of the first transgender reality stars.
The following April, Playing It Straight aired on Channel 4. In this show, a woman named Zoe had to guess which of her 12 suitors were gay. According to The Guardian, 2.3 million people watched as Zoe picked gay man Ben as her winner, meaning he was entitled to take all of the show’s £100,000 prize (in the finale, he says he will split the prize money with her).
Both were also criticised for how they portrayed their LGBT contestants. The Telegraph once called There’s Something Like Miriam “the nadir of reality TV’s most shameful era”.
The article criticises scenes that “humiliated” Miriam, such as one in which a doctor inspects her genitalia. According to Sky, over one million viewers watched the show’s finale, in which contestants can be seen laughing as Miriam reveals she is trans to the show’s last remaining man.
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In 2017, the show's creator Remy Blumenfeld told the New Statesman, “I deeply regret the way her suitors, and subsequently the tabloid press, sought to deal with their own unresolved issues around gender and sexuality by making [Miriam] the joke.”
On BBC Radio 4’s UnReal, external in 2022, he said of the show: “Our intention…was for viewers to watch it and relate to Miriam’s story. And to the question, ‘will they still like me, once they find out who I truly, fully am?’”
One critic of Playing It Straight is Niall Richardson, a senior lecturer at the University of Sussex, who wrote a paper about the show in 2009.
“Playing It Straight coded the gay men as villains, who were obviously lying and deceiving the woman,” he tells BBC Three.
One of the main reasons that a gay man wins is because suitor Zoe doesn’t believe that a builder could be gay.
Niall says: “The winner said he felt he had made a political point because he had not been suspected of being gay due to how he conformed to masculine tropes. The show basically rewarded a gay man with £100,000 for being non-effeminate.
“What sort of message did this send about the perception of effeminacy to gay men (especially young men) watching the show?”
In UnReal, Remy Blumenfeld argues that shows like Playing It Straight were typical of their era of reality TV, in which only the most extreme ideas would get greenlit. “The trick to getting a new show commissioned was always having a new twist,” he said. “If there wasn't something fresh and new in it, they wouldn't commission it.”
Eating With My Ex has featured LGBT couples since 2017
‘There was no intake of breath, no, ‘oh god, we’ve got lesbians on’
There was a seven-year gap between Playing It Straight series one and two. In that time, there had been a shift in attitudes towards LGBT people in the UK. Same-sex marriage legislation was legalised in summer 2013.
In the 2010s, we began to see progress in shows like Blind Date, the dating show in which contestants had to choose from three suitors hidden behind a screen. When the show was rebooted in 2017, it featured same-sex participants for the first time.
“It was no big deal [with the audience]," Blind Date host Paul O’Grady told Radio 4’s The World Tonight in 2017. "There was no intake of breath, no ‘oh god, we’ve got lesbians on.’”
I Kissed A Boy is hosted by Dannii Minogue
'I Kissed a Boy is kicking the door open'
Other dating shows began to feature couples from across the LGBT spectrum. Channel 4 led the way when First Dates had its first gay match in 2013. BBC Three’s own Eating With My Ex had LGBT couples in its first series in 2017. Shows like Channel 4’s Married At First Sight and Sky One’s Dating No Filter have also featured LGBT participants.
In the late 2010s, UK viewers got their first dating shows with all-LGBT casts. The first of these was The Bi Life, E!’s 2018 format featuring nine “bisexual+ or questioning” cast members. Series eight of MTV’s Are You The One with an all bi/pansexual cast followed in 2019.
And with I Kissed A Boy, the UK has its first all-gay male dating show.
“I Kissed a Boy is kicking the door open," host Dannii Minogue tells BBC Three, "allowing space for there to be lots of different programming for this community.” The show bills itself as a “groundbreaking show that will celebrate the queer community.”
I Kissed A Boy cast member Subomi praised the show for creating a space in which he could totally be himself. “Most of the crew were queer” he tells BBC Three. “It really allowed me to kind of just relax into the space and feel more comfortable, more comfortable than I'd felt in a lot of places before.”