Daniel Doheny: Alex Strange Gay, a guy chasing a d*ck, a n*de breeder. With some karaoke and an Irish Short Guy

 

Link to the n*de dudes

When not-fully-clothed photos of Daniel Doheny in Breeders appeared online, I figured that he was starring in the tv series about parents who hate their kids.  No, that series aired from 2020 to 2023, and this Breeders is from 2026.  

Since breeder is gay slang for hetero, could it be a series about a gay guy trapped in the straight world?

No, it's a horror thriller about a straight guy who is kidnapped due to his superior genetic material and told to have babies with a lot of women. He refuses to do the act because of his girlfriend back home, so they force him to submit samples instead.

A big-beneath-the-belt muscleman.  I could see how...

Wait -- this is Daniel Doheny.   Cute, but he hasn't been to the gym lately, and his dangling bits are rather on the small side.  I guess that's the point: he's an unlikely candidate.  Maybe they grabbed the wrong guy?

Further research reveals that Daniel is best known for Alex Strangelove (2018): he plays a high schooler who doesn't realize that he's gay until his girlfriend figures it out and finds him a boyfriend. 

I stayed far away from that movie, offended by the low-scale homophobia of the title.  Not as bad as "an abomination," but I still don' t like gay stuff being slurred as "strange." Why didn't they just come out and title it Alex Gay People Are Deviant? 

So Danny Boy is going into this profile with two strikes against him, to use a hetero metaphor.

Question #1: Any other strange guy roles?

Daniel Doheny (the Anglicized form of the Irish Ó Dubhchonna) was born in Vancouver in 1997, and attended Langara College, class of 2012.  His  on-screen acting career begins in 2012, with some shorts, a guest spot on Supernatural, and Adventures in Public School (2017).  He plays Liam Heap (really?), a homeschooled boy who braves a public high school and meets The Girl of His Dreams.

Looks like we get a shirtless shot of Andrew Herr, who would go on to play a "he might be strange" straight dude on Letterkenny.

Next came Alex Gay Stuff is Weird (2018) and The Package (2018): Five friends (Danny, Luke Spencer Roberts, Eduardo Franco, and two girls) go on a camping trip, when Eduardo's character accidentally gets his manitou cut off.    It gets a lot of damage in the "race against time" to the hospital, including a scene where one of the guys has to s*ck snake venom out of it. Like gay bedroom stuff, Can you believe that strange guys do that, har har?

On RG Beefcake and Boyfriends: The impressive beneath-the-belt gifts of Alexander Calvert, who played Chad. 

More after the break

Five things I like and five that I don't like about "My Brother, the Minotaur." #5 involves backsides and Ely d*ck

  

Link to the n*de photos

My Brother the Minotaur (2026) is an Irish animated series about a minotaur boy named Lorcan being raised by humans.

In Greek mythology, the Minotaur is a monster, the offspring of Pasiphaë and a bull, hidden away in the Labyrinth and fed human youth, but here minotaurs are humanoid beings with massive torsos and bull-horns.

Lorcan's questions about his heritage become urgent as he enters his teen years, and begins experiencing rage, hardening horns (symbolic of something or other), and disturbing nightmares.  Meanwhile, strange things are happening in the village.  His younger brother Charlie helps him investigate.

After watching several episodes, here is my evaluation:

Things I like:

1. The animation is very impressive, with stone cottages and dark forests  drawn in loving detail. The Kilkenny-based Cartoon Saloon wanted something unique, different from what other teen cartoons were doing.

2. The Irish culture.  They live on Bryony Island, named after an indigenous clinging vine.  Lorcan means "fierce one" in Irish.  You see the Irish flag and currency.  

3. Antagonist Craignelder's son Wesley Junior (Elliot Grihault, top photo and below) feels guilty about his involvement in his father's evil schemes, and may be working toward becoming an ally.  He has a poster of a sword-and-sorcery muscleman on his bedroom wall, an easy-to-miss queer code.

4. Lorcan (Ely Solan, left) and his brother have two female friends, but they never pair off into romantic dyads.  Actually, the girls have a lesbian subtext relationship of their own.

5. Many of the voice cast are queer in real life or have played gay characters.  

Ely Solan (Lucan), age 28, has a girlfriend, but he also has some potential n*de pics online (on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends)

Billy Jenkins (Charlie, the brother, left) emphasized the queer undertones as the Artful Dodger in Oliver! on stage and the tv series Dodger.

Billie Boulet (Dana, the tall, thin female friend) emphasizes the queer undertones in Anne Frank's story in A Small Light.

Michael Sheen (Antagonist Craignelder) has played several gay characters, including Robbie Ross, Oscar Wilde's boyfriend, in Wilde (1997); the closeted Carlos in Nocturnal Animals (2016); and the angel Aziraphale, who is in love with the demon Crowley in Good Omens (2019).

Elliot Grihault (his son, Wesley Jr ) is reputedly gay in real life.

More after the break

My Boyfriend and I Play "Fighting Prince of Donegal"

This is the Scholastic Book Club edition of Fighting Prince of Donegal, by Robert T. Reilly.

It may not look like much now, but when I was in fourth grade at Denkmann Elementary School, it appeared among the selections offered by the Scholastic Book Club.  I was entranced.

This was no wimpy fairy-tale prince in love with a princess.  He was a Fighting Prince, strong and powerful.  I had never heard of Donegal, but it was obviously a mystical, distant country with castles on high mountains, outlined against an orange moon.

My boyfriend Bill and I both ordered copies.  They wouldn't arrive for four to six weeks.

We talked about the book every day.  Would the Prince have muscles?  Would he have a best man?  Would he rescue his best man, who would then sigh "My hero?" and melt into his arms?



We made swords out of cardboard and played "Fighting Prince of Donegal."  My brother got to be the villain, who would lock Bill in the dungeon (the lilac bushes outside my house) so I could rescue him.

We often talked about what the Prince looked like.  If you read the ad very carefully, you could see that the book was originally published in 1958 and called Red Hugh, Prince of Donegal.  That meant a red-head.  He must look something like this.

Or, from an adult point of view:

We looked up Donegal in the Golden Book Encyclopedia.  It was a county in Ireland, on the northeast coast.

There was a book in the Denkmann Library called Donegal Stories, but it was all fairy tales, which we  hated.

Would those books ever arrive?

Bill's big brother Tom told us that a couple of years ago, Disney made a movie version of The Fighting Prince of Donegal, starring Peter McEnery.

"Did he rescue a boy or a girl?" I asked expectantly.

"Neither one," Tom said.  "He gets rescued by an older guy.  I don't remember his name.

The older guy in the 1966 movie is Henry O'Neill, played by Tom Adams. And Hugh does get a girlfriend. 

The books arrived around Halloween.  We ran to Bill's house and upstairs to his room, thrust aside our other selections --  Journey to the Center of the Earth, Arrow Book of Ghost Stories, The Forgotten Door, 13 Ghostly Tales -- and opened our books and started reading.

It was the most boring thing I had ever read!


After a few minutes, I looked up.  Bill was leafing through the pages, looking for the "good parts."

I skipped ahead to the end and announced "Red Hugh gets a girlfriend!"

Bill and I looked at each other.  He put the book down and glanced at our cardboard swords in the corner.

"Wanna play Fighting Prince of Donegal?" I asked.

He nodded.  "But this time I wanna rescue you, and you have to melt into my arms and say 'My hero!'"

Update: Hugh Roe O'Donnell (1572-1602) led a confederacy of clan chiefs to resist English Protestant incursions into their territory.  Although he ultimately failed (the English controlled Ireland for the next 300 years), he became a symbol of Irish nationalism.  He married Rose O'Neill as a political move, not because she was the Girl of His Dreams, and divorced her after five years, for reasons that are unclear (according to a 1986 biography).  The couple had no children; maybe one of them was sterile.  Or maybe the Fighting Prince was not particularly interested in the ladies.

See also: Manawyddan Son of the Boundless: a gay Theosophist writes about two gods in love

Gay Teens in the Summer of Love.

Connor Newall: The Hottest Property in Fashion buddies with Alfie Williams, models in gay ads, plays gay guys, shows his....

Manawyddan Son of the Boundless: a gay Theosophist writes about two gods in love

 

Around fifth or sixth grade, I found a book in the Denkmann Elementary School Library, Hero Tales from Many Lands: short vignettes from the lives of Beowulf, Achilles from the Iliad, Sigurd from the Volsunga Saga,  Rustem from the Shah Nameh, and many others. 

Most were unreadable due to the old-fashioned writing style or silly subject matter  -- "How Cuchulain wooed his wife"?  Why not tell about his heroic deeds? 

But "Manawyddan, Son of the Boundless," from the Welsh  Mabinogion,  brought that moment of ecstatic joy that I knew from Rich and Sean in The Secret of Boyne Castle

Barnabas Collins and Willie Loomis on Dark Shadows

Ray and Cho in Operation Time Search

 Chekov and Sulu on Star Trek

It was about two boys together:

The gods are thinking of raising Pwyll Prince of Dyfed to godhood, but first they give him some trials to see if he's worthy.  They remove his memories -- he will be called Dienw, Nameless -- and send him out into the wilderness.  

After wandering for years, hungry, tired, and "knowing all sorrow," Dienw stumbles upon "a youth of great beauty" harping a song so beautiful that the animals stop to listen. He introduces himself as Goreu fab Ser, Son of the Stars.

When I was ten years old, this was the  most beautiful picture I had ever seen.

They travel from Ireland to Wales together.  

When they are crossing the Menai Strait, between Anglesey Island and mainland Wales, their coracle capsizes, and Goreu can't swim!  Dienw drags him kicking and struggling to the shore, and then, overcome by exhaustion, dies.  

Goreu carries him to to Mount Wyddfa (Mount Snowden, the highest mountain in Wales), where the gods live, and immerses him in the Cauldron of Life, Pair Dadeni.  

Dienw awakens to "one of immortal beauty, whose forehead shone like the Morning Star. " Goreu, revealed to be the God Gwydion ap Don, hugs him and says that his new name is Manawyddan, son of the Boundless.

Same-sex love not only exists, it carries with it a spark of the Divine!  

In junior high my friend Darry and I started writing a fantasy novel that, we claimed, was absolutely not imitating Tolkien.  I borrowed the Cauldron of Life and the last scene, where Jim awakens and Rai greets him with a hug, directly from the story.  

And I wanted to know more.  What happened next? Did Manawyddan and Gwydion ap Don rule together?  Did they have more adventures?  

More adventures after the break

"House of Guinness": Heirs to a beer empire in 1868 Ireland. With a gay brother, shirtless hunks, Irish hiphop, and a heck of a lot of d*cks

 

Link to the n*de dudes

I've been having trouble recently, beginning reviews of movies and tv shows and then not liking them, or when I like them, there's no gay representation or beefcake, so I can't review them here.   So this time I cheated by checked in advance: House of Guinness has a gay character, and lots of the actors have appeared n*de.

Episode 1 Prologue: Closeup of the beer-making process, with the ingredients, water, hops, and so on.  A sweaty bare-chested bloke adds the fire.  I like this tv series already.  Then comes family, money, and rebellion.  

Scene 1: St. James Gate, Dublin, 1868:  As Foreman Rafferty (James Norton, left) walks through the factory, a dude asks if there will be trouble today. Of course, there's always trouble with the Guinness Family. 

Outside, someone throws a beer bottle at the logo, and Prohibitionists burn an effigy of Benjamin Guinness: "A brewer of sin and debauchery!"  His funeral is today, and they are intent on preventing his procession from making it to the church.

The Temperance Movement was nearly as popular in 19th century Ireland as in the U.S., attributing almost all crime, poverty, disease, and insanity to alcohol consumption.  

Meanwhile, Fenian Leader Patrick (Seamus O'Hara) tells his followers than the Guiness heirs  are weak and divided, so this is a perfect time to free Ireland -- by attacking the funeral procession!  "Grab whatever weapons you can find, but spare the horses -- all horses are Catholic."

England occupied Ireland until 1922, forbidding the use of the Irish language, discriminating against Catholics, and promoting stereotypes that are still common today.  There were lots of revolts, rebellions, and terrorists acts, notably from the Fenian Brotherhood.

In the factory (very impressive set, lots of workers), Foreman Rafferty tells the men to arm themselves.  They have to fight to get the boss's corpse through to the church.

The battle is accompanied by the hiphop song "Get Your Brits Out," by Kneecap. Ordinarily I dislike contemporary music in a historical drama, but not when it's mostly in Irish:

Ach Stalford agus an DUP

Gach lá, taobh amuigh de mo theach

"Go back to Dublin if you want to rap"

Anois éist, I’m gonna say this once

Yous can all stay just don’t be c*nts

 

Scene 2: Iveagh House, the Guiness family home (built 1736, now the headquarters of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade).  Femme, decadent Edward (Louis Partridge) complains that his button-down conservative brother Arthur (Anthony Boyle) has been in London so long, he's lost his Irish accent.

The third brother, Benjamin (Finn O'Shea, top photo) is asleep on the couch, still hung over from one of his benders.

They discuss the hypocrisy of everyone pretending to grieve, when the Irish hated him, and the English are happy that he is gone: now they can manipulate the children.  

Sister Anne tells them to shush their bickering; it's time for the funeral, and they have to act like a civilized Christian family: "Decadent Edward, change your shirt. Drunken Benjamin, change into some clothes you haven't slept in. Conservative Arthur, just change." 

More after the break

"The Secret of Boyne Castle": Kurt Russell, a dreary November night, and the smile that changed the world

We usually went to church on Sunday nights, but for some reason I was home one night in the early 1970s to see the last half of the best movie ever made, The Secret of Boyne Castle, on the anthology series Wonderful World of Color.
This was former child star Kurt Russell's only movie as a Disney Adventure Boy (others included Peter McEnery, Tommy Kirk, Tim Considine, and Jeff East) before he moved on to playing oddball outsider Dexter Riley in a series of Disney comedies.

Here Kurt plays Rich, an American exchange student in Dublin who learns that his older brother Tom (bisexual muscleman Glenn Corbett, previously a model for Physique Pictorial and star of Route 66) is not a steel company executive after all, but a spy charged with delivering essential information to Boyne Castle, in the west of Ireland. When Tom is captured by Russian agents, Rich must take over the mission, racing through the quaint villages and lush green hills of Ireland, hoping to elude capture and reach Boyne Castle before the Russians. Fellow student Sean (long-faced, steely-eyed Patrick Dawson) tags along, throwing himself into deadly danger for no logical reason except that he rather likes Rich.

The two are presented as more intimate than mere buddies, framed in tight shots, their faces together in close ups. While they are sleeping on the heather, Rich hears a suspicious noise, and wakes Sean by moving his own body slightly. Although all we see are their faces and necks, to wake someone with such a small gesture means that they must be cuddling together. They rescue each other a dozen times, and are eventually rescued by big brother Tom.

But the most important scene, the scene I have remembered fondly for 40 years:

At an inn, Rich flirts with a waitress.

“You didn’t tell me you had an eye for the ladies!” Sean exclaims, as if he hadn’t anticipated any competition.

Rich responds by asking the waitress if she has any rooms to rent for “for a few hours.” Suspicious, she wants to know why the two boys would need a room for such a short period.

Rich looks at Sean and smiles.

I was entranced by that smile. I knew that it was a clue to the secret. If only I could decipher it, I could find my way to that other world, Oz or Living Island or Middle Earth, the world where boys could fall in love and got married.

How might we account for the not-so-subtle homoerotic bantr between the Rich and Sean? Certainly Glenn Corbett might be a gay ally: he began as a model for the Athletic Model Guild, the Advocate Men of its day, and made a career as a buddy-bonding “man’s man. Kurt Russell was never particularly gay-friendly.

Patrick Dawson works mostly in Irish radio, but his limited filmography includes the gay-vague Ginger in The Jigsaw Man (1983). We should look at the director, Robert Butler, who in the 1960’s specialized in dramas with strong male leads, such as Ben Casey, Dr. Kildare, and I Spy, and later directed such hunk-fests as Remington Steele, Moonlighting, and Lois and Clark. Whether he was working with Bruce Willis, Dean Cane, Pierce Brosnan, or Kurt Russell, Butler neither minimized nor hid their physicality, allowing and even directing them to be open as objects of desire, both to male viewers and to each other.

Peter McEnery: The First Gay Teenager

In Victim (1961), 21-year old Peter McEnery played the first explicitly identified gay teenager in film, a working class boy named Boy who commits suicide in prison.  His affluent, middle-aged lover, Melville Farr (gay actor Dirk Bogarde), tries to uncover the blackmail ring responsible for his death.  Portraying gay men as victims rather than monsters was revolutionary, and paved the way for the decriminalization of same-sex acts in Britain in 1967.

Peter moved directly from an amazingly courageous role to Disney, becoming an Adventure Boy with the two usual attributes: a muscular physique and heterosexual obsession.

In 1964, he starred in The Moon-Spinners as Mark Camford, a young banker who gets involved with spies in Crete, and in the process falls for vacationing British girl Nikki (regular Disney star Hayley Mills).  No buddy-bonding, but quite a lot of shirtless scenes, and more suspense than one usually gets from Disney.

In 1966, he played the titular role in The Fighting Prince of Donegal: Red Hugh, the 16th century Irish prince who started a rebellion against the oppressive English.  Hugh falls for a girl (Susan Hampshire), but also buddy-bonds with an older man.

Maybe the parallels with Victim were too great, or maybe Disney was being extra-cautious after the accidental outing of Tommy Kirk.  For whatever reason, Peter never worked for Disney again.  Instead, he continued his career of gay-vague and not-so-gay vague characters.

In I Killed Rasputin (1967), Peter played Prince Felix Yusopov, who was bisexual in real life, the lover of Grand Prince Dmitri Pavlovich (and enjoyed dressing in drag).  The movie tries to closet him, and all but eliminates Dmitri, but still Peter manages to imbue his character with a homoerotic passion (and he dances with a man).

Other sexually adventurous movies followed, but the most famous is Entertaining Mr. Sloane (1970), based on the play by gay writer Joe Orton.  Mr. Sloane (Peter) is a male prostitute who moves in with a closeted gay man (Harry Andrews) and ends up the unwilling boy-toy of both him and his sister.

I haven't seen any of Peter's later works, mostly British television and tv movies, but some of them look interesting, and with ample buddy-bonding potential: The Cat and the Canary (which has a "gay" keyword on the Internet Movie Database); a version of Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream; and Clayhanger, from a series of novels by reputedly gay author Arnold Bennett.

I have not been able to discover his real-life sexual identity, only that he was married to Julie Peasgood for a time, and has a daughter.  But with all of his gay-vague and gay roles, who cares?

See also: Fighting Prince of Donegal.

Erin go Feirc: Nine Kilkenny cocks and Dublin dicks, plus a dolmen, a castle, and the Londonderry wall

   Link to NSFW version 

I visited Ireland several years ago to research language education.  First stop: Glenstal Abbey School, near Limerick, about 2 hours southwest of Dublin.

The abbey entrance

Kilkenny fun run

Not one of the runners

Gay couple in Dublin

Northern Ireland after the break

Two questions about Paul Mescal: Does he appear in anything good? And is it ok to post dick pics?

  

Link to NSFW version

Paul Mescal was born in Maynooth, Ireland, about 30 minutes west of Dublin.  He graduated from Trinity College in 2017, and went to work in the theater, getting roles in The Great Gatsby, The Plough and the Stars, A Midsummer Night's Dream, A Streetcar Named Desire and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. 

 In 2020 he broke into television with a starring role in Normal People, about two Trinity College undergrads in love.

Wait -- why are they "normal people"?  Do they have some marginalized trait, like being autistic? Reading the description, it doesn't sound like it. Marianne is rich and outspoken, Paul an A-list athlete. Sounds like "Love Story." The only conflict I can see is that they both have friends who would oppose the match, so they have to keep it a secret.  I guess "normal" just means being heterosexual, as opposed to gay.

Apparently the two have a lot of sex, with long scenes of them being languid in each other's arms afterwards, so if you can find some way to crop the girl out, you can get a lot of dick pics. 

But wait -- Buzzfeed News tells us that "Paul Mescal just called out a woman who made him "really angry" by telling him she'd seen him naked and saved a nude screenshot." 

The woman approached him in a bar and said: "I didn’t think the show was any good, but I saw your willy and I have a photo!”

His response: “Truly gross. What is a person supposed to reply to something like that?  That's fucking rude!"

I can understand his reaction: you haven't seen the actor naked, you've seen the character he is portraying.  Besides, even if you did see someone's dick without an invitation, like in the urinals or the locker room, why would you brag to them about it?  It would be like saying "I'm stalking you."

But he brings up a question: is seeing an actor's penis on screen substantially different from seeing his face, or his bare chest?  The aesthetic appeal of the actor's face and physique adds to our enjoyment of the movie, in some cases quite a lot.  But does the penis move the scene away from the aesthetic into the erotic?  And is that inappropriate?

I don't think so.  An actor's work can be enjoyed on many levels.  Faces and physiques can be quite erotic, and a penis has aesthetic appeal.  Viewers can enjoy an image in many ways, for what it reveals about the character, for its placement in the narrative, for its symbolic value, because it is beautiful, or because it is hot. Especially with the girl cropped out.

Next question: Does Paul star in anything good? That is, with gay characters, gay subtexts, or an intriguing premise, and minimal red flags like terminal illness.

Normal People is out.  I'm turned off by the implication that being heterosexual is "normal," so being gay is "abnormal."  Besides, it's just a collegiate romance.  We've seen hundreds of them.  

According to the IMDB, Paul next appeared in four episodes of The Deceived, 2020: A university student falls in love with her prof, who may have killed his wife.  Paul's character is in love with her. Looking for gay content, I found a reference to a subplot on a discussion board, but nothing about it appears in reviews. Nope.

The Lost Daughter, 2021: A university professor on holiday in Greece remembers being a "selfish and unnatural" mother who had an affair and abandoned her family.  Yuck.

More after the break

"Pixie": Gay subtext couple, Irish scenery, priest gangsters, and a bunch of butts, but no pixies

   

For movie night this week, we saw Pixie (2021).  The title makes you think of a children's fantasy about pixies, but it's actually an Irish gangster comedy.  

Pixie (Olivia Cook), the free-spirited, conniving stepdaughter of gangster Dermot O'Brien (Colm Meaney),  sends two of Da's goons to steal a million euros of Ecstasy from a rival gang of drug-running priests.

The goons happen to be her Ex-Boyfriend Colin (Rory Fleck Byrne), who isn't over her yet, and her Secret Boyfriend Fergus (Fra Fee, right).

Her plan is to sell the Ecstasy, dump the Secret Boyfriend, and move to San Francisco, where she will study photography. (You can't do that in Dublin?).  

You see where things might go wrong?

Things go wrong: 

Ten minutes into the movie, both goons and her Dad are dead (with Dad's corpse in the trunk), both the priest gang and Dad's Enforcer are on her tail.

Then two clueless doofuses knock on her door: Frank (Ben Hardy, left) and Harland (Daryl McCormack). Let's just call them Laurel and Hardy.

They mistakenly believe that she will have sex with any man in exchange for letting her photograph them (she actually photographs Frank in drag). Then they are attacked, and flee together.

Did I mention that Pixie's Stepbrother (Turlough Convery) hates her and is looking for an opportunity to take her down?

And that she has another ex-boyfriend, Gareth (Sebastian de Souza), who happens to be the nephew of the head gangster priest?

Laurel and Hardy want to have sex with Pixie.  They discuss women's body parts. They try to convince an altar boy that God wants all men to have sex with ladies. And they discuss same-sex activity only in terms of prison rape and priestly pedophilia.  

But they kiss during the beginning of a three-way (cut short by the arrival of the Enforcer).  Later, when they escape being killed, Pixie points out that it was almost their last kiss: "Isn't it romantic?"  They look embarrassed.

And at the end of the movie, Pixie leaves for San Francisco by herself, and Frank and Harland ask "Where shall we go now?" and walk off into the sunset together.  Have they become romantic partners? Or were they always romantic partners and in denial?  Either way, ending up with each other instead of the girl gives them a remarkable gay subtext. 

Beefcake: The boys strip down to go skinny-dipping, but in a long shot, too far away to see much.

Other Sights: Beautiful Irish countryside, establishing shots of Sligo.

Heterosexism: Pixie tilts her head and smiles, and every men gapes in slack-jawed lust and does whatever she wants.  Her teenage stepsister hooks up with the altar boy.

Gay Subtext: Laurel and Hardy.

My Grade: A-.

"Moone Boy": "The Goldbergs" with Hormone Monsters

 

The icon for the Irish sitcom Moone Boy certainly drew my attention, depicting a dour-looking man and a screaming boy joined at the head. How is it even possible to have conjoined twins of different ages?  And how would they avoid trivializing the problems of real conjoined twins?

Turns out that the icon is deliberately misleading -- the series is about imaginary friends.  Apparently nearly everyone has an imaginary friend to guide them through life.  The dour-looking man, Sean (Chris O'Dowd) is unhappy because he has been assigned to the screaming boy, Martin Moone (David Rawle), who is growing up in rural Ireland in the late 1980s and early 1990s.  Sounds like The Goldbergs, with the addition of the hormone monsters on Big Mouth, but this rather odd premise has resulted in three seasons with excellent reviews: "a coming of age charmer": "a hidden gem": a Rotten Tomatoes score of 83%.

Ok, I'm game.  The only episode synopsis with the key word "gay" is #4, "Another Prick in the Wall."  (Does "prick" mean the same thing in Ireland as it does in America?).

Scene 1: Imaginary Friend Sean narrates that Martin, age 12 or 13, is "learning the mysterious ways of women."  Heteronormative dreck!  Why do hetero men think women are so mysterious?  

Martin's sister put makeup on him while he is sleeping.  He's late for school, so he rushes out without looking in a mirror.  A group of girls laughs at him, but he thinks it's because he is eating cereal on the run.  

Boys variously wolf-whistle at him, call him "beautiful," and sing "Do you really want to hurt me," by androgynous singer Boy George.  Still clueless.

He asks his best friend Padriac (Ian O'Reilly) why everyone is acting so weird. "Probably because you're wearing makeup." Martin is shocked and horrified, but Padriac says "I kind of like it."

Scene 2: Mom amd Dad (Peter McDonald, below) having breakfast and watching the fall of the Berlin Wall (November 9, 1989).  Mom announces that she's going to become an instructor at Weight Wishers (like Weight Watchers, but not trademarked).

Scene 3: Martin tries desperately to scrub the makeup off.  Another boy approaches: "I know everyone is giving you a hard time, but I want to wish you the best of luck at being gay."  "No, this is all just a big misunderstanding!"  

Scene 4: Dad at his shop, trying to get the printers to remove the apostrophe from his sign "Moone's Bed's." 

Cut to Martin tattling on his sister for applying the makeup. Mom: "She was probably trying to spruce you up a bit."  Martin: "No, she was being mean! She's pure evil, like...like...um..."  He looks around for an example, sees Hitler on tv, and decides on Skeletor from Masters of the Universe.  Mom suggests that he just get up earlier, but another lady tells her that he needs time to "play with himself."

Martin is horrified that the adults know he does that.  Flashback to him playing with a soccer game under the covers.

Scene 5: Martin tries to find a way to shorten the walk to school, so he'll have time to both "play with himself" and check for make-up.  The direct route requires him to climb a giant wall and then jump down.  He conjures Imaginary Friend Sean for advice.  

Sean: "You don't have the balls to make this jump."  

Martin: "What's wrong with me balls?"  

Sean: "No, I meant your attitude.  You're the cautious type.  Play it safe."   To demonstrate, he points out that Martin has conjured him wearing ladies' high-heel shoes.  I'm not sure how that demonstrates caution.   Why not knock a hole in the wall?

Cut to Padriac watching the Berlin Wall fall with his Imaginary Friend, wrestler Crunchie Haystacks (Johnny Vegas), who says of Ronald Reagan, "I'd let him tag me anytime."  What does that mean? Does he think Reagan is hot?

 Scene 6: The plan is to remove small chunks of the wall every night, so no one notices until it's too late. Dad notices right away, but he doesn't care; watching news about the fall of the Berlin Wall has made him horny, but Mom refuses sex.  She's busy working on her Weight Wishers spiel.

Montage of a gradually increasing hole in the school wall.  Martin and Sean dance in celebration; Sister looks out the window, sees Martin dancing by himself, and calls him a "knob-bucket."

Scene 7: Finally the hole in the wall is ready.  Martin wakes up wearing makeup (has this been a daily occurence?), quickly washes it off, and heads through the hole, arriving at school on time.  Only today Padriac is wearing makeup!  

Scene 8: Many kids are using the hole as a shortcut to school with "gay abandon," and back home "with even gayer abandon."  Padriac rushes through the hole, trying to hide his makeup.  Being gay and wearing make-up are two different things, you knob-bucket!

"Cross-traffic soared," Imaginary Friend Sean tells us, "and Martin's popularity with it."  Now the boys are calling him Wrecking-Ball and singing "I want to be your sledge hammer" (a song by Peter Gabriel).  

Scene 9:  Mom and Dad finally get around to yelling at Martin about the hole, with kids coming through it all the time, and the kid in a wheelchair wanting an accessibility ramp.  "You need to fix the wall!"  

Martin fixes it, but does a shoddy job, hoping it will fall down on its own.  Imaginary Friend Sean complains that this is boring; no doubt Padriac and his Imaginary Friend are doing something exciting.  Switch to them watching David Hasselhoff at the Berlin Wall, discussing his extraordinary hotness.  Padriac is still wearing makeup. 

Beefcake: No. Ronan Raftery (left) appears in 10 episodes as Dessie Dolan, the boyfriend of Martin's sister. 

Gay Characters: Padriac, probably, but he gets a girlfriend in a later season.

Heterosexism:  Martin doesn't express any interest in girls in this episode, but he "discovers the opposite sex" later on.

Homophobia: Some of the jokes teeter toward homophobia, mainly by equating gay identity with feminine-coded behavior.  But it's rural Ireland in 1989; what do you expect?

My Grade:  B

Frank of Ireland: More than Friends, Less Than Gay

 

Amazon Prime has just dropped Frank of Ireland, about "a misanthropic fantacist in arrested development" with an ex-girlfriend he wants to win back and a best friend named Doofus.  Doofus?  Does that mean something different in Ireland?  Obviously there won't be any gay representation, but two of the six episode icons show the guys hugging, so maybe some gay subtexts?  And when they're not in doofus makeup, Brian Gleeson (Frank) and Domnhall Gleeson (Doofus) are rather attractive, so maybe some beefcake?

Episode 1 is about Frank trying to win back his ex, so I skipped to Episode 2: Frank tries to prove that P-B is a "yoked-up party boy," but instead "falls under his spell," straining his relationship with Doofus.

Scene 1: Dinner.  Ex-girlfriend Âine (pronounced roughly Ahn-ya) announces that she's moving in with P-B (Peter-Brian, played by Tom Vaughan-Lawlor), because he's a doctor, not a dead-end slacker.  Frank is upset: "I'd always assumed that when my Mum dies, you'd be taking care of me. Can I move in with you two?"

She leaves; Doofus comes in through the dumbwaiter to serve dessert.

Scene 2: Home.  Mother Mary wants to know why Frank can't move in with Aine and P-B.  She has no room for him, as she's moving her boyfriend in, and no money to support him.

Scene 3: Frank and Doofus (left) spyng on P-B, looking for evidence that he's cheating on Aine so she won't move in. He's actually eating cheese -- "so fucking posh!"  They plan to prank him with a bag of flaming dog poo, but Doofus brought his own poo instead (yes, we see it).

As Frank is trying to set it on fire, P-B opens the door and invites him in.

Scene 4: A very posh, elegant country house.  P-B and Frank drink whiskey and bond over criticizing Aine and discussing archery.

P-B: We should go to the range sometime (for archery)

Frank: Tomorrow?  Why not tomorrow?  I want to be with you.  Sorry, was that a bit intense?

P-B: No, I liked it.

Goodbye hug on the doorstep.  Frank does seem quite taken with P-B.

Scene 5:  Doofus massaging Frank in the bathtub.  "You don't like him, do you?" he asks nervously

"No, I'm just hanging out with him to get dirt.  Tonight was the most fun I've had with anyone in ages...he makes me feel like I can be myself...but it's not sexual."

Just then P-B texts Frank. Doofus tries to grab the phone from his hand.  It falls into the water, so Doofus reaches in to fetch it from his crotch (no boundaries, bloke?).

A stranger, Stephane (Paul Forman), comes in naked to use the toilet. Whoa, beefcake!  He explains why he shaves his pubic hair: for aerodynamics (spinning his penis around while the boys watch, agape).

Turns out that Mom is making extra money by renting a room to college student Stephane, to the consternation of her boyfriend.    

Scene 6: P-B teaching Frank how to use a bow and arrow.  Then they hit the hot tub.  Doofus appears, disconsolate (all of them in swimsuits).  Frank: "I can't help it.  I like him, ok?"  Doofus: "What about the plan?  You aren't even trying to break up P-B and Aine!"

When P-B arrives, Doofus tries to get him to confess: "You can tell us if you've cheated on Aine.  It's fine.  We don't mind if it was with men, women, or children.  Not children."

Scene 7: Bicycling home.  Doofus tries to win Frank back: "I've got something in my pocket that you'll like." No, not his penis,  two tickets to the Viking Splash Tour.  Frank hesitates: "Only two tickets?  What about P-B?"  

"I wanted it to be just us.  What's happening to us?  We're drifting apart.  I love you....."  So Frank agrees.

Scene 8:  The Viking Splash Tour, which appears to be people in Viking helmets and life preservers sitting in a pontoon boat.  Frank: "This feels wrong.  Besides, I've got to go change for wine-tasting with P-B."  Doofus: "Can I come?"  Frank ignores him.

Scene 9: Frank getting dressed for the wine-tasting.  He goes into the living room, where Mom is getting a massage from the naked Stephane while her boyfriend fumes, to announce that he's going out.  

Scene 10: At the wine-tasting, Frank complains to P-B about Doofus: "I just feel like we're growing apart." Meanwhile, P-B starts complaining about his patients and bragging about all the women he got before Aine.  And a lot since, including his patients.  Darn, he turned out to be a sexist jerk.  At least Doofus was nice (and hung, as we discovered in the swimsuit scene).

Scene 11: Frank visits Aine, but doesn't reveal P-B's cheating: "Basically he's clean.  A boy scout, and not in a bad way."  But Doofus has been on the case, too.  He sent a pack of photos of P-B and Frank together, but with a woman's face pasted over Frank's.  She sees through the ruse, of course, but she still doesn't want to see P-B anymore; "he's too fucking posh."  She prefers Frank.

She tries to get with Frank, even offering to do anal, but he rejects her.  Not interested.  Wait -- didn't he want to win her back in Episode 1?

Scene 12: Frank yells at Doofus for spying on him and P-B, and implying that they were cheating on Aine.  He angrily breaks up with him.

Scene 13: Frank in bed, looking at photos of him with Doofus and P-B.  Torn between two lovers, feeling like a fool.  Stephane, in his underwear in the other bed, offers him advice: with Doofus, he's the dominant partner.  If he goes with P-B, he'll be the "bitch."  "It is better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven."  This guy speaks broken English, but can quote Milton?

Scene 14: A housewarming party to celebrate Aine and P-B moving in together.  Doofus approaches Frank: "I just want you to be happy.  I know you and P-B are together now, and I won't stand in your way." 

But Frank realizes that he'd rather be with the nice (and hung) Doofus than the rich jerk P-B, so they reconcile and walk off into the sunset arm in arm.

Beefcake: Lots.  Every male character gets a shirtless or swimsuit shot.

Penises: None shown, lots discussed.

Other Sights: Some exteriors of the Irish countryside, one city shot.

Gay Characters: No.

Gay Subtexts:  Very obvious, self-aware conflation of friendship and romance. Frank-Doofus and Frank-P-B are more than friends, but not lovers (unless you count the penis-grabbing).  But I get the impression that it's a Dumb and Dumber conflation, where they guys are so stupid that they can't tell the difference between a friendship and a romance.  We're supposed be laughing at them, thinking "An attraction to another guy!  How ridiculous!"

Irish Slang: According to my research, "doofus" means "stupid" only in America; the Irish term is "eejit."  "Posh" is a derogatory term for someone or something upper-class.  

My Grade: B