So you finished Our Flag Means Death…
What show do you want to obsess over now?
Also read on Medium / / Read on Patreon.
So, Our Flag Means Death, unexpected workplace romcom chock-a-block with anachronistic 18th century fun, piracy on the high seas, gay and trans and otherwise genderweird and queer characters, not to mention neurodivergent and disabled ones, is over for at least another year. You’re aching for something of a similar flavour to fill the gap — especially if, like many of us, the finale has left you disappointed and eager to watch a show with a bit more care for its queer audiences.
Want recs?
After finishing Our Flag Means Death, I’m in the mood for…
Ed cradling Stede’s face in S1 of Our Flag Means Death. Via IMDb.
… more (relatively) light-hearted queer comedy!
The most obvious example I can start with is, of course, What We Do In The Shadows. While its fifth season was weak, its sixth season was in my opinion its best ever — a spin-off of the Taika Waititi-directed (and starring) mockumentary film of the same name, WWDITS is a fun-filled, ridiculous and deeply silly show starring a variety of incompetent and bumbling and blood-thirsty vampires and their various friends, enemies, and companions. It’s constantly and continuously queer, with the majority of the cast of characters being openly bisexual, and one of them being gay and having an emotive coming-out arc with his family.
Nandor (Kayvan Novak) and Guillermo de la Cruz (Harvey Guillén) in WWDITS. Via IDMb.
WWDITS follows the adventures of Guillermo de la Cruz, fat and gay and badass and so fucking pretty, the familiar to a vampire named Nandor the Relentless, a big himbo ex-warrior plagued by insecurity and ready to enter in power struggles with anybody from a fellow warrior to a household appliance, and the rest of Nandor’s household — Laszlo Cravensworth (once an English aristocrat, still a dandy, charming, slutty, and well-spoken — and often tinkering with experiments or DIY), Nadja of Antipaxos (once an impoverished member of a Mediterranean village, dramatic, intelligent, sharp-witted, and wry — and often getting involved in various misadventures), and Colin Robinson (an “emotional vampire” who feeds by boring those about him, dull, mundane, and painfully cringe at all times in the best of ways). As a mockumentary, its tone is silly and light-hearted, but it’s not without its emotional stakes, and there’s so many references to other pop culture vampires.
The BBC’s sitcom, Ghosts, is a great sitcom to go for if you’re in the mood for more of a neurodivergent found family vibe, with sumptuous costumes and a complex and intriguing cast who have a lot of wonderful moments with each other. The show follows Alison and Mike, who inherit a manor house and find when they start to refurbish it that it’s full to the brim with silly, ridiculous, and unrelentingly friendly — not to mention antagonistic — ghosts. Ghosts, like Our Flag Means Death claimed to be prior to its S2 finale, is a tremendously loving and kind show — it spends a lot of its time building up flawed characters and encouraging them to change and grow, giving you time as a viewer to love them.
See any familiar faces? Many of the Ghosts cast also appear in Horrible Histories. Via IMDb.
The show is not as continuously or constantly queer as WWDITS, but it does have elements of queerness dotted around the main cast, particularly in the character of the Captain, the ghost of a WW1 soldier who was never deployed abroad, but spent his time in service yearning for the intimate company of a fellow soldier.
Brendan Scannell and Zoe Levin in Bonding. Via IMDb.
Want something a little weirder, a little kookier? Crave a bit more of the BDSM flavouring around Our Flag, more whips, more leather, more latex, more kink? You might like to try Bonding — this show features a woman who begins moonlighting as a dominatrix and then employs her gay BFF as her assistant. It suffers from the tendency shows like this have to sideline Pete a bit as the gay BFF, with some of his characterisation being squandered to prop up the less interesting protagonist, but it’s really funny and honestly super heartfelt.
And if you want really weird, really kooky, and unabashedly and delightfully and wonderfully queer, there is always The Gay and Wondrous Life of Caleb Gallo, which is a gorgeously funny and loving gay comedy that you can watch online!
Apart from those above, you might like to try Special (a sitcom exploring the romantic and sexual misadventures of a deeply selfish and flawed character a la Stede Bonnet, this one a young gay man with cerebral palsy), Schitt’s Creek (a sitcom about a posh family falling on hard times and featuring several queer characters, particularly the bisexual David Rose, played by Dan Levy), and Grace and Frankie (a show about two ageing women who are best friends, and whose husbands leave them to start a romance with one another).
… more of the stunning cast!
You’ve watched Our Flag Means Death and you’re craving more of the spectacular and incredibly skilled cast.
If you want more of Nathan Foad (Lucius Spriggs) particularly, you’re in luck — last year, Foad wrote and served as executive producer on a show loosely inspired by his early life as a weird boy growing up gay in Nottinghamshire, Newark, Newark. It’s very silly, funny, full to the brim with love, and also deeply silly and willing to get in touch with the cringe side of life. It’s only three episodes, but starring the unparalleled Morgana Robinson as the harried mother of Leslie, the closeted-but-not sixteen-year-old who is trying desperately to lead the tragic gay life he’s seen on TV, it really makes the most of that limited runtime, and it’s so fucking good. Nathan Foad even has a cameo in it as a freaky and overfamiliar employee at the bowling alley.
He has a cameo in another great show, too — Bloods is an incredible sitcom about two NHS paramedics working in an ambulance together. It’s rapid-paced, it’s messy, it’s horrible and hilarious, and it stars Jane Horrocks as Wendy across from Our Flag’s Samson Kayo (Oluwande) as Maleek. The two are chalk and cheese in the front seat of their ambulance together, and Kayo is so incredible in the lead role balancing Maleek’s own desire to appear as cool and tough whilst also being vulnerable and having his own insecurities, especially because Wendy challenges him on so many points. Wendy is great as well, the two an exercise in contrasts, but Kayo and Horrocks are spectacular among an equally spectacular cast — you get to see so many different dynamics at the depot and in other settings, amongst other NHS staff, and the show is non-stop with the punches and the punchlines. If you really enjoy how well-balanced and how fitting the soundtrack to Our Flag is, you’ll love the music and its pacing in Bloods. Foad’s cameo in this is as Wendy’s neurotic and kind of a fuck-up son, and he’s so messy.
If you want more of Joel Fry (Frenchie), he stars in the first few seasons of Plebs — this is a goofy comedy set in Ancient Rome, and it’s not dissimilar to The Inbetweeners in its tone and content. Some of the jokes are funny, sometimes. I don’t recommend it because it really gives Joel Fry his full acting chops — but he’s hot and he’s funny and he’s cute in this, and even if you’re not super passionate about the show, if you like Frenchie, you probably will like Stylax too.
Joel Fry and Con O’Neill (Izzy Hands) also both play characters in season 2 of Ordinary Lies, which is an anthology series, so you don’t need to watch season 1. The premise of the show each season is that the narrative jumps between characters in a workplace and explores the ramifications of the small lies they tell themselves and each other. While O’Neill’s role is a more typical set of lies that concerns adultery (or not), Fry’s involves vigilanteism and attempts at superheroism, and the plot is quite fun. This show is obviously a drama, and is tragically heterosexual on many points, but for all that, has its good and intriguing elements too.
But what about Con O’Neill doing what he’s good at — playing wet, pathetic men? Very wet, very pathetic men? In Happy Valley, O’Neill plays a gloriously wet and pathetic man named Neil Ackroyd, who enters into a relationship with the protagonist, Catherine Cawood’s, sister, Clare. Clare is an alcoholic in recovery, as is Neil, and they have a really sweet and mutually supportive relationship — Neil’s particularly gorgeous in the most recent series, where he really dotes on Catherine’s grandson, Ryan, and he and Clare play a great duo. Neil is introduced in the beginning of season 2.
The premise of the series is that Catherine Cawood, a police officer in Yorkshire, is attempting to solve crimes while at the same time her grandson, Ryan, is curious about and desires to make contact with his father, whom he has never met. Ryan’s mother was raped by his father and died by suicide after Ryan’s birth, whereon Catherine raised him alongside her sister. Happy Valley is a cop show, and Catherine Cawood is really funny as a character. She’s a deeply conservative and cruel, reactionary woman who constantly engages in police brutality whilst trampling over people’s rights — she believes that people are born evil and bad, effectively, and while she often talks about the effects poverty have on people’s outlooks, lifestyles, and actions, she can’t quite make that connection with her beliefs. As a cop show, it’s really interesting because it’s very pro-cop and tries to be on Catherine’s side for much of her crueller actions, but at the same time is so starkly blunt about the awful shit she does that it doesn’t exactly make you put faith in cops no matter the intent. Clare Cawood, and then Neil, are naturally far more critical of Catherine’s perspective.
But if you really loved Izzy at his best in S2, if you love Izzy full of love whilst also being precise and cold and calculated in the defence of his family, if you love him beautiful and wonderful and unabashedly queer, you’ll undoubtedly adore Val, who appears in Uncle as the transfem and gorgeous dad of Gwen. Uncle isn’t a great TV show, it’s an example of one of those shows where they give a deeply dull cishet white dude who feels insecure a show where he sort of masturbates about how much he sucks and how he’s unlovable, but really, isn’t it on the people around him to love him anyway?
But Val is great. She’s so much fun, she’s funny and sharp and full of quips, she’s flirtatious, she’s hot, and she has some tremendous gender stuff going on as well as some gorgeous costuming throughout. If you like Uncle’s humour, watch all the episodes — if you don’t, just skip everything that doesn’t have Val in it. Val is where the good stuff is.
Or don’t watch it at all, and just watch this scene pack on YouTube:
Taika Waititi appears far more in great movies than he does TV shows, although he’s also one of the producers on Reservation Dogs, which is excellent — it’s a native-led and starring comedy series, and it rocks. Most of the time when Waititi does TV, it’s in cameos.
Apart from the cameo he makes in the What We Do In The Shadows TV show, I mentioned in the sitcom section, Taika Waititi also appears in the Flight of the Conchords TV series, starring the band members of the band of the same name. Rhys Darby also appears in every episode as Jemaine and Bret’s fictional manager, Murray Hewitt, and Murray is such a fun, bizarre character — and with a wholly different facial hair situation than you might have imagined for him before.
Wholly different facial hair. Via IMDb.
… more sailors!
Pickings are slim for a good pirate show, or indeed, any good show with nautical flavours to it — scenes at sea are high budget and hard to shoot, and as was evident with much of Our Flag Means Death’s second season at the hands of HBO Max, many studios do not want to proffer the budget for such things.
Let’s start with the best of recommendations — a show that’s unapologetically queer, anti-imperialist, anti-establishment, and full to the absolute brim with pirates, historical and fictional. Interested in Mary Read, Anne Bonny, Calico Jack, Benjamin Hornigold, Israel Hands, or of course, the inimitable Edward ‘Blackbeard’ Teach, real historical pirates who are portrayed and played with in the course of Our Flag Means Death, and want to see a very different take on them? Enjoy lesbians constantly scheming to kill each other, torture each other, and generally make one another miserable (sexual)? Read Treasure Island, perhaps, and ever wonder what came before?
Not-Yet-Captain Flint (Toby Stephens) and Thomas Hamilton (Rupert Penry-Jones) in Black Sails. Via IMDb.
Black Sails has all of the above and more — while it is very queer and anti-establishment, I will say that it’s far more similar in tone to Game of Thrones than to OFMD. The comedy bits are hilarious in part because the stakes are so high, but Black Sails is firmly a drama, and a gritty, violent one at that. It lacks the escapism present in OFMD — there is constant and continuous sexual violence, brutal gore and brutality, racism, classism, deep misogyny and homophobia from the society around the characters. The characters on offer are varied and complex, flawed, and interesting, but your mileage may vary with how much you vibe with them.
Making use of some of Starz’ old set pieces for Black Sails, including some of their ships, the new One Piece live-action reboot — an adaptation of the anime of the same name (itself an adaptation of the manga) — is a fast-paced, fantastical, and colourful new release. If what you loved about Our Flag was its playful relationship with real-life piracy and chronistic details, its flexibility with “reality” and its eagerness to play around with tropes and expectations, with its creation of found family through a ragtag and varied mix of individuals. What it isn’t, unfortunately, is textually or explicitly queer, let alone as unabashedly queer as Our Flag and Black Sails are respectively.
HMS Terror and HMS Erebus sailing through the surface ice in The Terror. Via IMDb.
If you’d rather have queer sailors at any cost than having ones that aren’t explicitly queer, there is, of course, season 1 of The Terror. Based off of Dan Simmons’ magical horror reimagining of the real events of the lost ships in the Arctic, the HMS Terror and HMS Erebus, the first season of this anthology horror series is itself a deeply anti-imperial story following the events of two British ships that become stranded on the ice whilst attempting to discover the North-West Passage, and in so doing poison themselves and the land and people around them. Stuck in place in a cold and unfamiliar environment that does not have sufficient resources to sustain them — and in any case, an environment and resources that as invaders of, they do not know how to live in relationship with — they are hunted by an Inuit spirit, a representation of and manifestation of the imbalance they’ve caused by their mere presence.
The Terror has a few more explicitly gay dynamics in the book than in the TV show, but the show does feature an unstable, cannibalistic bastard of a man whose favourite hobbies are identity theft, violence, and emotional manipulation — and he’s gay. Representation win!
As you might imagine from that description, The Terror is not a cheerful, happy show — it’s deeply violence and very at home with hopelessness, but has some fascinating exploration of British imperialism, whiteness, class dynamics, queer men on ships, and chilling horror.
And it’s not a TV show, but I would be remiss if I did not mention and recommend Taika Waititi’s favourite romance movie — Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003, dir. Peter Weir). Based off of Patrick O’Brien’s long-running Aubreyad, starting with Master and Commander, this film is about Captain Jack Aubrey and his duet partner and best friend (wink wink) Stephen Maturin, the ship’s surgeon. It’s a gorgeous film and while of course not explicit, it’s pretty fucking gay — although unlike the other pieces I’ve mentioned, as Napoleonic-era fanfiction about British navymen, it’s not nearly as critical of British imperialism as one might like, with the majority of the criticism coming from Maturin, and might leave a poor taste in the mouth compared to pieces more critical of the British imperial evil.
… more queer period dramas and historical shows!
Anne Lister (Suranne Jones) contemplating her hat and gloves. Via IMDb.
Let’s start with a historical drama — Gentleman Jack, starring Suranne Jones, is set in the early 1800s and is an biographical look at the life of the cryptic diarist and all around delightfully butch lesbian dirtbag, Anne Lister. Apart from the obviously intriguing concept, the show has some sumptuous costuming and set designs, and there are so many different characters and dynamics throughout. I’m always a sucker for an epistolary piece, and as it’s based off of Lister’s diaries, this show has a lot of epistle work throughout.
If you’re a sucker for lesbians in period dramas, though, you might just like Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries — the eponymous Phryne Fisher is not the lesbian in question. She’s a flapper and private detective in 1920s Melbourne, complete with a little golden gun, and is very hetero — but her best friend, a doctor named Mac (short Elizabeth MacMillan), is gay, and she’s so much fun. Where Phryne is really high-energy and excitable, constantly jumping from idea to idea, Mac is a lot chiller and more smooth, and she’s so suave and so much fun. Miss Fisher is a fun show — alas, a cop show, but it’s a lot more light-hearted, and it does a lot of playful stuff with the period and particularly with costuming details and things like cars, weapons, and various inventions.
Getting dressed and leaving the boytoy still abed. Via IMDb.
If you’re open to a miniseries that’s a lot dirtier and nastier than much of the above, have I got the recommendation for you: A Very English Scandal. Starring a relatively innocent and easily manipulated Ben Whishaw across from the deliciously greasy and depraved Hugh Grant, this is a dramatisation of the Thorpe Affair — a political scandal in the UK in the late 1970s — and it’s so fun and so sexy. If whilst watching Our Flag you’ve been giggling and kicking your feet whenever the more fucked up shit goes on in intimate ways, you will almost certainly delight in this one.
… more of… something. Surprise me!
You might have heard of NBC’s Hannibal, which is a gay take on the dynamic between Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham, but the same creator, Bryan Fuller, also did Pushing Daisies, which is a gorgeous 2-season show that was cancelled long before it ought have been. It explores intimacy at a necessary distance, and has some wonderful queer themes throughout, and stars Lee Pace.
The new TV adaptation of Anne Rice’s books, Interview with the Vampire, is glorious — it’s openly and unabashedly gay, it’s so full to the brim with depth, and unlike other shows I can mention, it really doesn’t try to shy away from the cruelty of abuses in intimate relationships, or try to shift the blame for abuse entirely onto the back of the victim in a last-minute attempt to foster more sympathy for the abuser. Interview goes so deep into the loneliness and isolation of being separated from society’s mores and expectations, of how that isolation leaves you at much more risk of leverage and abuse by intimate partners, of the brittleness of found family under heavy pressure, and alongside all of that, like…
It’s a vampire show! It’s sexy! It’s full of blood and horror and misery and grief — the grief of being alive when you should be dead, and at the same time, being halfway dead when you seem to be alive. It’s funny and it’s dark and it’s just full to the brim with poetry, has some honestly gorgeous dialogue, and on top of all that, it’s well-paced, beautifully costumed, and tremendously shot and scored. Watch!
Looking for queer movies, as well as TV shows? I have a big rec list of gay movies here:
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I posted 7,758 times in 2022
That's 4,205 more posts than 2021!
99 posts created (1%)
7,659 posts reblogged (99%)
Blogs I reblogged the most:
@m-e-w-666
[not a mutual]
@hanged-man-is-trans
@crit20lesbian
@oddly-okay
I tagged 4,400 of my posts in 2022
Only 43% of my posts had no tags
#ofmd - 792 posts
#mcr - 442 posts
#tma - 343 posts
#sam - 223 posts
#cats - 186 posts
#wwdits - 136 posts
#save - 88 posts
#bats - 72 posts
#ref - 54 posts
#wwdits spoilers - 54 posts
Longest Tag: 139 characters
#me as someone with semi-severe misophonia who wants all environments to be perfectly silent except for noise that i put in there on purpose
My Top Posts in 2022:
#5
354 notes - Posted April 25, 2022
#4
my review of wednesday (2022): not gay enough
465 notes - Posted December 1, 2022
#3
can't stop thinking about you could've raised a better girl like. god that's it isn't it. that's what it is to be someone who doesn't realize they may be trans until adulthood, but who has always felt a connection to the "other" gender. 45 years old telling their proverbial mother, you could've raised a girl if only i had understood myself sooner. you could've raised a girl if only i'd had the words for what i felt. you could've raised a girl if only i wasn't forced into maleness from birth. you could've raised a girl if only you'd seen me and listened to me and been the mother that i needed you to be. and i think i would have been better as a girl, and i wonder if maybe i wouldn't have been a disappointment to you if i'd been raised as your daughter instead of your son. and yes, i could have been a better son, but only if i were somebody else. maybe i should have tried harder to be a better son to you but maybe you could have been a better mother to me. maybe i would be a better girl now if you had raised me that way.
510 notes - Posted September 24, 2022
#2
ok so this last episode reminded us that what we do in the shadows is a documentary, and that there's a lot going on behind the scenes that the characters keep to themselves that's not recorded by the documentary crew (like guillermo's embezzling - until he gets caught). we are not going to see anything personal, private, or secret. this is easy to forget because it seems like the vampires have zero filter whatsoever - but remember how well laszlo kept the secret about colin robinson's death and ALSO baby colin last season??
anyway, does anyone else feel like... for part of season 3 and for all of this season, there's been a lot more going on between nandor and guillermo than we see on screen? i think they read less like people who haven't acknowledged their feelings, and more like people who are keeping a very big secret kind of badly from their friends and the documentary crew.
this next part may be a stretch, but: i can imagine that they got together secretly last season, there was a big conflict where nandor was unwilling to be public about what was going on and instead kept putting on big displays of heterosexuality and/or running away, and then the season finale was supposed to be them being open about being together, free from the judgment of laszlo or nadja or the documentary crew. think about "my nan- master," think about the whispered exchanges between them where the crew is filming them secretly, think about their little moment where nandor says he won't bring guillermo's luggage and guillermo goes >:( and nandor goes "lol jk" like he isn't ashamed to be publically caring towards guillermo, and guillermo LIGHTS UP and it's so fucking cute
and then they didn't run away together. and season 4 has read a bit like a post-breakup, where neither will admit that anything even happened in the first place.
598 notes - Posted August 4, 2022
My #1 post of 2022
hey. autistic transmascs. it's okay if your autistic perspective influenced your discomfort with femininity, and that doesn't mean you're any less trans or that you shouldn't transition/should detransition. if transitioning makes you feel happier and more at ease with your body, then it doesn't matter "why" you're trans. womanhood is not inherently sacred and it's ok to not be a woman if you don't feel like one. a feminine body is not inherently superior to a masculine one, so you aren't "ruining" your body by taking masculinizing hormones or undergoing masculinizing surgeries. do what makes you happiest and don't drink the radfem koolaid.
1,068 notes - Posted September 30, 2022
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welcome to my blog <3 this is my side blog where i can be myself and selfship ^^, my main is @maxichiz so if you get a follow or reply from there, its me.
♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡
my name is max or keon, i am a autistic queer aroace trans teen. i am a disabled indigenous poc, i would appreciate it if tone tags were used as well!
i use any pronouns including neos except for she/her, so please do not use she/her or any feminine terms except for pretty on me at ANY time, thank you.
♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡
please dni if you are the following / support it : proshipper, useless lgbt discourse, satire, ableist, racist, homophobic etc, support endo systems, prolife, anti selfship, if you selfship with real people, nandermo shippers (for my comfort please), dsmp fans, zoophiles, MAPs. i will add more if ever needed.
onto my f/os ! i do not like sharing my f/os, so if we happen to share an f/o please softblock me, for both of our convinces! thank you!! <3
Romantic F/Os :
Guillermo De La Cruz, What We Do In The Shadows (Studded Stakes 🕶⛓)
Phil Guy, Blueycapsules (Spiked Horns ☎️🖤)
Beetlejuice, All 3 Beetlejuice sources ( Striped Cuffs 💚🖤 )
Hunter, The Owl House (Golden Spirits 💛👻)
Argyle, Stranger Things (High Hopes 🍃🖤)
Dr Hofnarr / Tricky The Clown, Madcom (Clownin’ Around 🎪🔪)
Dee, Metal Family (Punk Metal 🎸⛓)
Leatherface, Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Chainsaw Melodies 🪚🎵)
Charles Lee Ray, Chucky (Plastic Kills 🔪🖤)
Kimiko, The Boys (Silent Nights ❌)
Gino Valentino, Blueycapsules (Chefs Kiss 🍕❤️)
Licorice Cookie, Cookie Run Kingdom (Necromancin Dancin’ 🪦💜)
Dr Habit, Smile For Me (My Flower 🥀🦷)
Sherrif, Madcom (Rootin n’ Tootin 🤎🖤)
King Dice, Cuphead (Soul Stealer 🎲💜)
♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡
Platonic F/Os :
Micheal Afton, Blueycapsules
Dustin Henderson, Stranger Things
Steve Harrington, Stranger Things
Starlight, The Boys
Steven Grant, Moonknight
Nandor The Relentless, What We Do In The Shadows
♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡
Familial F/Os :
Black Noir, The Boys
Fritz Valentino, Blueycapsules
Joyce Hopper, Stranger Things
Jeremy Fitzgerald, Blueycapsules
Baby Colin Robinson, What We Do In The Shadows
thats all for right now, thank you for reading, love! feel free to ask me any questions, my ask box is now open :) goodbye!
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