"Man in the Orange Shirt": Despondent gay Brit hooks up, gets a boyfriend, plays cards with Gran. With some n*de Julians

 

   Link to the n*de photos

 Man in an Orange Shirt is a two-part BBC television series or coherent movie.  Part 1 features the "forbidden love" of two soldiers immediately after World War II.  It has a sad ending.  I don't want to watch that, so I'll skip to Part 2, about a modern-day couple, Adam and Steve.  Adam and Steve, like from the homophobic slogan: "God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve, therefore you shouldn't be gay"?  That's ridiculous! Is this a comedy?

No, a drama: "A minefield of internalized issues and dangerous temptations line the road to their happiness."  In 2018?

Scene 1: Long close-up of an eye as Adam (Julian Morris, who didn't come out until he was 38) scrolls through a hookup app while walking down the street.  He stares with a sinister expression, as if he's on his way to murder someone.

Cut to a long close-up of an elderly hand next to black-and-white photos of a man getting married and in a soldier uniform.  It turns out to belong to Mrs. Flora, a woman with a man's haircut, reading the newspaper while her attendant brings pills. If she was married to the WW2 guy, she'd be well over 90 now.

Psych!  Adam wasn't on his way to murder someone, he was just going to work.  He doesn't even seem to hate his job as a veterinarian. After returning a dog to its kid, he sees his next patient, a cat owned by Steve (David Gyasi)

Adam and Steve?  Come on, that's ridiculous.  

Some stuff about a sick, meowing cat that I'm fast forwarding through.

Scene 2: And then Adam (left) and Steve have sex, but blurry, in weird angles, with obstacles in the way.  The dialogue is "Yes! Yes! Moan." 

Mrs. Flora's attendant leaves, with shepherd's pie in the oven for later, while Adam walks down the street with a bouqet of flowers.  Either the sinister look is his natural express, or Adam hates everyone and everything. 

He sits down to dinner with his grandmother, Mrs. Flora, and compliments her plate warmers.  She thinks that he is mocking her. A bit paranoid, Gran?  Then she criticizes his jacket. 

They discuss how Gran did a good job raising him, as opposed to...his sister?...who is having twins and therefore reprensible?  I'm not catching these British insult/compliments.  

Gran notes that she deflects all of the busybodies who ask when he's going to settle down: "Some of us prefer our own company."  Or you could just out him.  You know that he's gay, right?

Dinner over, Adam leaves, but Gran stays at the table, looking despondent.  You left her to do the dishes?

Scene 3: In Adam's absurdly elegant London flat, he stands in the shower and tries desperately to scrub off a stain on his shoulder.  I don't get it.  This guy didn't appear in the last episode, so what is the significance of the stain?  A reference to "Macbeth"?

He drops in to give Steve his dead cat's ashes, and finds a super-elegant apartment and a fey older boyfriend, Casper the Friendly Ghost (Julian Sands), who is annoyed but accepts the hookups as a necessary evil, required to have access to Steve's penis. 

Adam tries to complement Steve's apartment and his job as an architect, but Steve find something wrong with each. Come on, dude, look on the bright side. You've got a great job, a great apartment in downtown London, a boyfriend who doesn't mind hooking up, and a tripod between your legs.  Cheer up!

Scene 4: Adam having dinner with female friend Claudia and her husband David (Eddie Arnold, who died in 2008, leaving over 140 classic country-western songs.  Aspiring actors might want avoid naming themselves after famous names, to make internet searches possible).   They want to fix him up with swishy American drama teacher Dwight (Hal Scardino):

"So, how do you know Claudia?"

"She was my girlfriend at uni."

"Oh.  I thought you were...um..."  The word is "gay."  Why is it so hard to say it?

"Um...,yeah...but..."  "I turned him!" Claudia chirps in.  Girl, don't say that, even as a joke.  It gives the homophobes ammunition for their "Being gay is a choice" arguments.

Adam continues to be despondent, and sneaks in the back room to check his hookup app contacts. Just date the swishy drama teacher.  He wants to ditch his friends for a hookup.  Claudia checks his face and dick shots to make sure he's worth it -- "yeah, hotter than Dwight, go on." 

Meanwhile, Gran is playing cards with her old-biddy friends.  One leaves to use the loo, and the others gossip about "two dates" with a man -- to a hotel!  Gran doesn't get it -- she hated sex, and was thrilled when her husband died and she didn't have to do it anymore.  Maybe you just hated sex with men, dear. Try out the Daughters of Bilitis.

Scene 4:  Adam trudges despondently through the busy streets as if he's on his way to a funeral instead of a hookup.  Cut to him topping the guy, Bruno (Phil Dunster) -- all dark, nothing showing.  Afterward Bruno complements him on his passion and tries an introduction, but Adam isn't having it: no names, no overnights, no "I'd like to see you again."  While Bruno is in the bathroom, he zooms away to trudge despodently through the streets of London. I get the impression that the showrunner strongly disapproves of recreational activity.  Even the participants hate it, and have to take six-hour long showers afterwards.

Scene 5: Adam fixes Gran's router while she heats up the food that her attendant prepared -- and complains about it, of course. I like complaining, too -- "here are the things I hated about it" is much more fun than "it was good."  But lady, there are limits.   

In other news, the letting agency said that the cottage needs too much work to be lettable (rentable?), so Gran wants to give it to Adam.  In Britain, a cottage is a small house in a rural area with no land around.  

"Besides, it will get you out of the city!"  You got it backwards, Gran: gay men move into the city.

Cut to Adam walking despondently and then being despondent at work.  He calls Steve -- for a date?  No, to help him renovate the cottage.  He's an architect, yeah?  

The place is a horrible dump, with moldy wallpaper, holes in the ceiling, a hole in the bedroom floor, no heat, and depressing furniture from the 1950s. But Steve thinks it's "brilliant," a perfect fixer-upper.  He's bored with "tarting up kitchens" and is desperate to "get my hands dirty."

More after the break. 

Wait,  I had it wrong all the time.  Adam and Steve haven't hooked up yet.  But what a misdirection:

1. We are told that Adam and Steve will become a couple.

2. Steve, a bald black guy, comes into Adam's veterinary office. They touch hands.

3. Cut to Adam having sex with a bald black guy.  What were we to think?

But they're about to come together.  Steve asks "Do you mind kissing me?"  Despondent, looking like he's about to have a root canal, Adam complies.  Dude, if you hate the idea of kissing him so much, don't do it.

Steve notices Adam's look of disgust and wonders if he's not into it.  "No, I'm into it -- it's just that I hate everything, so this is my standard look."  

Adam grabs Steve's crotch, and Steve backs off: "This isn't a porno.  There's a person in here.  I'm not defind by what's in my pants.  We date, we get to know each other."

"Sorry, I can't do that."  So you're aromantic?  Just come out with it, be proud.  But I think, according to the showrunners, that there's something seriously wrong with Adam.

Scene 6: Time for the awkward drive home. "Sorry, I don't want the job after all, and you can just let me off here."

Cut to Adam despondent in his apartment.  Black leather furniture, white wall, no color, no decorations.  Dude is a robot.  He tells Gran that he just wants to sell the cottage, not renovate it.

More scrolling through the hookup app and looking despondent.

Scene 7: Looking despondent at work.  Uh-oh, Steve stops by.  He knows Adam is not interested in dating, but he has some ideas on renovating the cottage, with floor plans and drawings. "I'm busy," Adam says brusquely. "Meet me at 5 at the cafe down the street."  Hope there's just one cafe

At the cafe, Adam says "These drawings are beautiful" (in a dark, depressed tone, of course).  He permits a half smile. "But I haven't decided on what I want to do with the cottage."  Snubbed, Steve rushes out.

Scene 8: Steve and boyfriend Casper the Friendly Ghost at dinner.  Steve really wants to do the cottage rather than renovating kitchen counters for Casper's rich friends.  Hot Stuff?  The Ghostly Trio?

Meanwhile, Adam is playing cards with Gran and discussing the cottage ad nauseam.  Get some gay friends, dude.  Later, he texts Steve and hires him. 

Scene 9: At the cottage.  "I'm not renovating kitchens!  I'm in heaven!" Steve exclaims. Adam is going to stick around and help: "They owe me so much leave."  I thought he was self-employed.

As they work, Steve criticizes Adam for getting so many buzzes from his hookup app, and suddenly for no reason they start discussing their childhoods.  Steve's father's: "His model of masculinity wasn't exactly Lord Berners." A British composer, novelist, and aesthete (1883-1950).  What an obscure reference!  Why not Oscar Wilde or the guy from "Are You Being Served"? 

At the end of the work day, Adam wants to go back to London, but Steve talks him into staying for dinner. He brought steaks. 

Adam reveals that he's not out yet.  He hasn't even told Gran.  Thirty years old, hasn't mentioned a girl since uni.  She can figure it out.

I'm out of space at the 30 minute mark, halfway through, and Adam has smiled only once.  And I haven't seen any intimate connection between these guys and the World War II couple.  I know Gran was the World War II guy's wife, but I was expecting constant call-backs and reflected scenes.  

What happens next: He eventually comes out to Gran, who remembers her gay husband and over-reacts with homophobic outrage.  But when Steve dumps Adam due to his hookup app, Gran comes around, and produces letters from her husband to his boyfriend to spark a reunion.

Beefcake: Always too dark and obscure to see anything.

Gay Characters: I don't get Adam's existential sadness. He is depressed by literally everything.  Maybe if he wasn't spending every moment of every day with Gran?  Take her to lunch once a week, and devote the rest of your time to making friends your own age?  Gay ones?

Adam and Steve:  No one mentions the homophobic joke, and this is not a comedy, it is a slow, depressing drama that begins with a dying cat. Could the writer and director have never heard of it?  Maybe it's not common in Britain.  But it certainly is in America, making their every interaction sound ridiculous and obliterating the suspension of disbelief. 

Adam and Steve?  Ridiculous!

Bonus: Nobody in an orange shirt appears in this section, so I'm including two of them.

See also: 

Gangs of London: A gay assassin, his boyfriend, a gay mafia son, and some s*x parties

The Holiday Exchange: Immensely wealthy a-gays look for love at Christmas