LOGO announced renewal of “The Big Gay Sketch Show” for a second season this week, coinciding with a lack of new gay characters or series at broadcast networks’ upfront presentations. The renewal comes less than a month after the show premiered.
The half hour variety/sketch show is on my DVR list, and the first episode is saved, mostly because of the hilarious sketch featuring a parody of Elaine Stritch as a Wal-Mart greeter. The same episode also featured a spoof on “The Honeymooners” starring Alice and Rhonda Kramden. In the sketch, when Alice asks for a T.V., Rhonda brings home a “transvestite” to keep Alice company. A third sketch showed a “bear” that had broken out of a bear/leather bar and was parading around a neighborhood as children and adults exclaimed “there’s a bear in our backyard.”
While the raunchy nature and homage to show queens of the past pretty much prevent the show from reaching a network audience, LOGO seems to have found success and built a fair amount of national buzz around their latest endeavor.
The show has appeared on “The View” (Rosie is one of the executive producers) and sketches have been featured on clip shows including E!’s “The Soup.” For
fans without LOGO, it can be downloaded on both amazon.com and iTunes and the official site features clips from previous episodes.
With mainstream visibility, and a second season that is sure to top the first, one wonders how a national audience is reacting as they see these images of the GLBT community, especially on clip shows that look for areas to poke fun at. Hopefully the tongue-in-cheek nature is not being lost. While my circle of friends found the routines worth a few laughs, others outside the GLBT community might use the show as a generalization of the whole community.
Still, it’s great to see the talented (and diverse!) cast of eight comedians will continue their antics. The eight comedians span a range of sexual orientations, races, and genders.
The network also announced a music reality show starring Lance Bass and a scripted action-comedy series about a gay bionic man. The show is being developed by “Queer As Folk’s” Dr. Ben, openly gay actor Robert Gant.
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