The Brothers
A groundbreaking US sitcom which dealt in a real way with
homosexuality, a million miles from John Inman's mincing TV
persona in Are You Being Served?. Dealing as it did with
such areas as AIDS, gay-bashing and male kissing,
Brothers was way too hot a topic for the major US
networks to handle - ABC and NBC turned it down flat - so the
series went out on the Showtime cable channel, fast becoming one
of the prime places to see material that stepped out of the
mainstream. Indeed, Brothers was the first sitcom made
specifically for cable.
Set in New York (although filmed in Hollywood), the series
focused on the three Waters brothers - Lou (eldest), Joe (middle)
and Cliff (youngest). Lou is a construction worker and something
of a father figure to his siblings; Joe (played by Robert Walden,
the likeable but pushy newspaper reporter Paul Rossi in Lou Grant)
is a former professional American football hero who has retired
and opened his own restaurant; and Cliff . . . well, Cliff is
gay.
This was revealed in dramatic fashion in the series' opening
episode, when he 'came out' on the eve of his planned wedding.
Because Cliff looks and acts 'straight' this makes the news
particularly hard for his brothers to accept. Indeed, this
inability of Lou and Joe to come to terms with the fact that their
baby brother was not one of them, but, rather "one of
them", formed the basis for much of the comedy. (And yes,
apart from the 'issues' the series was also funny.)
Acceptance was an especially tough proposition for Lou, the
very macho, very hetero ex-sportsman, who also had trouble coming
to terms with Cliff's visiting effeminate friend Donald.
Other regularly featured characters were Sam, who married Joe
midway through the series, Penny Waters, Joe's daughter (from his
first marriage); and Kelly, a waitress at Joe's restaurant.
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