Far more than gay men, lesbians are one of the great invisible minorities of British TV drama – British TV generally, in fact. Sure, there have been the milestone moments – the Brookside kiss that titillated the nation back in 1994 and was the making of the then 18-year-old Anna Friel, or Jeanette Winterson’s terrific 1989 adaptation of her own novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. Both featured lesbianism as an issue or a problem rather than a well-adjusted sexual orientation.
More recent dramas have set the Sapphism in the past, with the likes of Fingersmith, Tipping the Velvet or The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister. But what of the promised land – a contemporary British (or, more to the point in this case, Scottish) equivalent of American TV’s feisty and unapologetic The L Word, in which female gayness is a given?
Does a Glaswegian The L Word sound unlikely? Well, here’s news; Lip Service is enjoyable - breezy and funny, and, like its heroine Frankie, not carrying an ounce of flab. This was as light and entertaining as any episode of Mistresses – which should come as no surprise as it was created by one of the writers of that show, Harriet Braun. And being set in Glasgow rather than, say London, means it isn’t striving to be metropolitan hip, although that said, there’s a nippy soundtrack from a selection of apparently up-and-coming Glaswegian bands that is bang on trend.
Yes, of course it’s a fantasy, but that’s almost the point – a political point, if you like. And of course all the women are gorgeous (pictured below) – something it shares with The L Word. No scary diesel dykes here, just mostly the unthreatening femme variety - this is a Sapphic TV show where even the one butch girl is butchly pretty.
Last night’s opener began in New York, where fashion photographer Frankie (Ruta Gedmintas) was busy seducing one of her models when the phone rang to inform her that her beloved auntie had died back in Scotland – which news didn’t stop her finishing what she had started. There was a message from the said auntie herself back at Frankie’s apartment, informing her niece that she had a secret she wanted to share with her before she popped her clogs. This mystery is going to be one of the series-long story arcs, and the means for getting Frankie back to Glasgow – and back into the life of Cat (Laura Fraser), the girlfriend she had upped and dumped two years previously. And there’s the other story arc: Frankie and Cat’s will they/won’t they get back together romance.
Ruta Gedmintas, with the looks of a comic-book punk heroine, was terrific as the lanky, chain-smoking, impulsive and promiscuous Frankie – well matched by Laura Fraser as the uptight architect Cat, nervously preparing for her date with the handsome butch policewoman she met on the internet. A sweetly comic turn was provided by Fiona Button as Cat’s flatmate Tess – a struggling actress oblivious to the hungry looks from Cat’s brother, which brings me to another point about lipstick-lesbian dramas – the way they key into the male erotic fantasies. Does it matter if a heterosexual male audience is getting turned on, along with the lesbian audience?
Either way, Lip Service was frank with its sex scenes, Frankie’s straightforward mode of address being a busy hand down the opposing trouser front. Such scenes would have been unthinkable 10 years ago, but otherwise there’s no reason other than sheer prejudice that Lip Service shouldn't find a mainstream audience.
In a recent report commissioned by the BBC, 18 per cent of viewers said they were either "uncomfortable" or "very uncomfortable" with the depiction of gay, lesbian or bisexual people on TV. Put another way, that’s 82 per cent who are comfortable with it. That’s a wide enough audience for Lip Service to be shown on BBC Two instead of BBC Three, you'd have thought. But, no, it seems lesbianism isn’t quite out of the ghetto yet - even if this particular BBC ghetto is the youth one.