![]() ![]() You’ve got to hand it to Billy Eichner for getting a rom-com made by a major studio, and with the help of straight-dude comedy legend Judd Apatow, no less. Soloway employed trans people above and below the line, giving big breaks to Trace Lysette and Alexandra Billings, and directors Rhys Ernst and Zackary Drucker. But Joey Soloway’s arresting Jewish family comedy was hugely influential in its popularity at the time (it first premiered in 2014 and was Prime TV’s first hit), and it told entertaining trans stories in a nuanced and wide-ranging way that hasn’t been replicated since. While “Girls” and “Looking” are having their Gen-Z revival, it’s only a matter of time before younger audiences rediscover the muddled genius of “Transparent.” Certainly, the show needs to be re-evaluated in the context of Jeffrey Tambor’s casting and sexual assault allegations. Here’s a list of some of the best and most queer TV shows and movies on Amazon Prime, listed in no particular order. ![]() And several library titles on the streamer are all-time queer classics, like “But I’m a Cheerleader,” “Priscilla: Queen of the Desert,” or the ravishing Park Chan-wook romance “The Handmaiden.” For one, many shows aimed at more general audiences still have some great queer storylines within them look to “Harlem,” for example. But that doesn’t mean that Amazon’s a dead zone for queer content. Yes, there’s some bitterness to this list, which is full of overlooked gems that haven’t gotten the chance they deserve. It was one of the best new series on the service, but there’s been no word of a second season since. In October last year, the company’s Amazon Freevee free streaming division dropped “High School”: a tender and lovely coming-of-age show inspired by the lives of gay music icons Tegan and Sara. “A League of Their Own” - a reimagining of the beloved Penny Marshall film that fearlessly tackled the queer themes that could only remain subtext in the original - made headlines earlier this year when it got renewed for an insultingly short four-episode second and final season, and its creators have criticized the company for failing to support shows aimed at women and lesbian audiences.Īt least “A League of Their Own” is getting a chance to wrap up its game other excellent queer-friendly shows like “The Wilds” or “Tampa Baes” got their runs cut without a chance of a conclusion. The problem, though, is Amazon often doesn’t give these shows the support that they deserve. Just earlier this month, the streamer dropped a phenomenal limited series retelling of David Cronenberg’s “Dead Ringers,” starring Rachel Weisz as a pair of twin lesbian gynecologists. That show now has a lot of baggage (the fact that the trans woman at its center was played by a cis man, and the fact that that man - Jeffrey Tambor - was fired after sexual harassment allegations is, put mildly, the worst), but it’s hard to deny the show’s historical significance.īeyond the thorny topic of “Transparent,” Prime does have a good track record of releasing shows with LGBTQ characters and centering their narratives on queer themes in particular, many of their shows focus on queer woman, refreshingly avoiding the centering of gay men that defined queer TV for decades. ![]() On the one hand, you have to give credit where credit is due: one of the service’s very first stabs at original programming was “ Transparent,” which in turn was one of the first shows to star a trans main character. If one were to rank all the major streaming services by queerness, Amazon Prime Video would be a pretty tough one to pin down. ![]()
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