Anthony Head

Him and Us: The Best Gay TV You’ll Probably Never See

Imagine a star-studded project backed by Elton John, riffing wildly off his actual life as a superstar. Imagine it as a cross between Sex in the City, Queer as Folk, and This is Spinal Tap. Then imagine it really gayed-up. And there you have Him and Us, a single-camera comedy pilot starring Anthony Stewart Head (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and Kim Cattrall (Sex and the City) that ABC declined to pick up for its fall schedule.

In Him and Us, Head plays Max Flash, a rock star on his farewell tour. Cattrall plays Freddie Lazarus, his manager, who for 25 years has kept Max’s show on the road. Freddie is tired, she’s burned out, and she’s counting the minutes until his final concert. And she’s doing it in her Manolos and showing a lot of leg, kind of like the love child of Ally McBeal and C.J. Craig.

It isn’t just that the storyline and some of the characters are gay. It’s not the fact that Max ends up in bed (offscreen) with the male Times reporter sent to interview him. It’s not the sprinkling of pretty boys around Max’s pool, or the young French hottie he’s picked up on the tour and asks Freddie to send packing. It’s not even the fact that he has a watch engraved “Love, Merv.”

No, based on viewing a copy of the pilot episode provided to AfterElton.com, there’s pretty much a gay angle on everything-plot, sensibility, humor, and characters. If this pilot had been picked up, it would have been the gayest show ever on broadcast TV, and there would be very little even on cable that could out-gay it.

Which raises the question, why didn’t ABC pick it up? Despite repeated requests, ABC declined to comment for this article. Representatives for Elton John did likewise.

There are dozens of reasons networks don’t pick up pilots. Sometimes they’re too expensive to produce. Maybe the demographics are wrong for the network’s target market. Maybe the pilot isn’t as good as it should be. So what was the problem here?

Comedies are on the decline on television right now, in favor of “reality” shows and dramas like Lost and Grey’s Anatomy. ABC ordered three times as many comedies to pilot as any other network and only picked up four for the fall schedule. Thus the odds were against Him and Us from the very beginning.

One of the comedies ABC did pick up is The Knights of Prosperity, a David Letterman-shepherded project about an ad hoc gang of neophyte burglars looking to rob Mick Jagger’s apartment. Jagger appears in the pilot, just as Elton John appears in the pilot of Him and Us. Maybe in the superstar sweepstakes, Jagger beat out John.

Other comedies that got the nod from ABC include Help Me Help You, a Ted Danson (Cheers, Becker) vehicle about group therapy. Interestingly, this show features a gay male character, played by Jim Rash (That 70s Show) so closeted even he doesn’t know he’s gay - although he should, given the stereotypical way he’s presented in the pilot script. ABC also picked up a multiple-point-of-view, season-long look at one couple’s wedding day called The Big Day, and Notes from the Underbelly, about a heterosexual couple having a baby.

Each of those comedies ABC picked up is more conventional than Him and Us. And that may also have been a factor in ABC’s decision. The failure of FOX’s quirky Arrested Development and the fact that NBC’s only slightly less quirky Scrubs has struggled to find a wider audience may have frightened studio executives from anything straying too far from the tried and true sitcom formula.

Nor can The Book of Daniel factor be entirely ruled out. Surely all of the big networks took note of the controversy generated last winter by NBC’s one hour drama. Conservative Christian’s objected not only to the show’s treatment of religion, but to the fact it included Christian Campbell (Trick) as the openly gay son of the Episcopal minister played by Aidan Quinn (An Early Frost) who accepted his son without reservation.

At least four NBC affiliates refused to carry the show, corporations pulled their advertising, and the network was deluged with negative phone calls and emails. It’s not hard to imagine NBC worrying that a show as gay as Him and Us might create similar controversy.

Indeed, Him and Us star Kim Cattrall told The Stage magazine, "It would have been a great series. Perhaps the subject matter might have been too much for some people."

So, what was “too much” about the pilot? Just about everything, which is the secret of its charm.

It opens with Cattrall’s character having a panic attack in her doctor’s office, and closes with her sitting on a jet with Max and his entourage, trying to figure out how she got there, considering she’d quit in the previous scene. Max, it seems, is a hard guy to say “no” to.

The cute French shop clerk doesn’t say no, the reporter from the Times doesn’t say no, and Freddie can’t say no, either, when Max refuses to let her quit.

Aging rock star Max Flash is played with style and wit by Anthony Stewart Head, who starred as the debonair Rupert Giles on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Max is handsome, unbelievably charming, and a bit petulant. He walks around with a little dog in his arms, and grins boyishly at anyone who tries to reign him in.

And while on stage at his farewell concert, attended by Elton John and Ozzy Osbourne (who guest as themselves), he gets hit by a massive wave of regret and announces, while Freddie has a breakdown backstage, that he’s not retiring after all.

The supporting cast is dazzling, with Max’s gay valet Sidney (Hugh Sachs) pretty much stealing the show. His flashback to an earlier relationship with a mob hit man includes the show’s only man-on-man kiss, a quick smooch in a dark car. (Cattrall’s assistant Jada, played by Ashley Williams, and Pete, one of the male security agents, played by Michael Trucco of Battlestar Galactica, gets the show’s only passionate-and heterosexual-kiss.)

Him and Us was the brainchild of Sex and the City’s Cindy Chupack and Desperate Housewives’ Michael Edelstein, along with John and his longtime lyricist Bernie Taupin. It’s hard to believe something this funny, with that kind of star power behind it, won’t get picked up by someone, although AfterElton.com hasn’t turned up any signs that’s in the works.

ABC did pick up another promising show with a gay character. The one-hour drama Brothers and Sisters, written and created by openly gay Jon Robin Baitz (The Substance of Fire), features Matthew Rhys (Love and other Disasters) as Kevin Walker, an openly gay US district attorney.

Even in dramas, though, networks tend to shy away from presenting strong gay characters. Bryan Fuller (Star Trek: Voyager, Wonderfalls, Dead Like Me), consulting producer for NBC’s Heroes, recently told Out, "There was a moment on the set where (Heroes creator Tim Kring) was with an NBC executive, who shall remain nameless, and the exec said, ’Hmm, you need to watch (the [male] cheerleader friend) because that character could be interpreted as gay,’ and Tim said, ’Why do we need to watch that?’"

Heroes is a sci-fi drama, with echoes of X-Men, and in an interview on SyFyPortal, Kring was quoted as saying, "I am intrigued by a gay character front and center, and we are openly discussing it in the studio and in the writers’ room now. It doesn’t scare me at all, and it’s always been a battle with networks on that sort of thing. There’s a subversiveness that you’re forced to think about these things with. You try to come in through a side door."

Maybe, as Cattrall suggested, Him and Us came in the front door way too brazenly for ABC. Perhaps, no matter how sophisticated and witty the pilot was, the network just wasn’t at home on the cutting edge.

Or maybe it was just bad luck there were two rock-star-backed projects in the works at the same time and the most heterosexual one was the safer bet. Whatever the reason, unless Him and Us finds a place on another network (unlikely) or cable (for which it’s probably too expensive), it’s some of the best, and gayest, TV you’ll never see.