Politics makes strange bedfellows. But what doesn't? The groundbreaking, explosive series about the lives and loves of a group of gay friends now adds a provocative new character: a mayoral candidate whose "family values" exclude homosexuals with families, but whose campaign advisors include a certain brilliant young gay ad man. Also new: a teenage hustler who may know too much about the murdered boy found in a dumpster. And it seems everybody is pairing up. Some couples you'd expect. Some you definitely wouldn't...

The American version of Queer as Folk, which is based on Russell T Davis's UK show, goes for explicit nudity in a desperate attempt to appear more controversial than it actually is.

I was surprised at how poor this show actually was. It's a drama, but one where the plot is almost always centred around who's going out with who. Don't be expecting many laughs - well not intentional ones - as this show takes itself way too seriously. There were some lines just begging for a cheeky schoolboy to pop up in the background and snigger. My favourite (on elections) was something along the lines of: "I've been through Clinton, Reagan and two Bushes..." Ah! comedy gold... unintentionally.

It's cliched beyond the point of ridiculous. The majority of the homosexual men talk in that stereotypical camp voice; all have a great dress sense (gay men do not all have a naturally good dress sense); fall into bed with each other; kiss and get naked at the drop of a hat; and spend the whole time bitching or worrying about the rest of their friends. Thankfully the women don't wear Doc Martins, have shaved heads and smoke like troopers.

And don't even get me started on the acting... Did the producers actually hold auditions? Or did they just hire people on the basis of whether they were cool with snogging on camera (at almost every opportunity) and were up for getting naked and wiggling their bottom up and down for no good reason? Seriously! I couldn't work out whether it was the script that was poor, or whether the actors really couldn't act.

While Season Three does attempt to offer more of a plot based string of episodes, rather than the purely relationship based stories from the first two seasons, there's still not enough here to get away from the fact that it's mainly a bitch/shag/snog -fest almost every episode. And, when you scratch the surface there's very little decent content to be found.

This DVD box set contains no extras at all.

It's cliched, dull and just too repetitive. If cheap titillation is your thing then you'll love this - otherwise avoid like the plague.

2

Pete Boomer