Showing posts with label Britain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Britain. Show all posts

Mitch Hewer: "Controversial" gay teen on British tv grows up to star in pantos, play Fortnite, and post a j/o video

 


18-year old Mitch Hewer, a new graduate of the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Bristol, entered acting with a bang in 2007 when he was cast a gay teenager on the teen angst drama Skins (2007-13).  After years of Thatcher-Major homophobia, Britain was becoming more gay-positive: laws prohibiting teachers from saying "gay" and public officials appearing at pride events were struck down, and Tony Blair introduced a civil partnership that gave gay couples many of the rights of heterosexuals.  There were several gay characters on British tv, but apparently a gay teenager was "highly controversial."  Mitch got  death threats, and was attacked by a guy with a knife.








Maxxie is a gay-stereotype dance major (which makes sense: Mitch was a dance major at the academy). During his 17 episodes, he hooks up with the down-low Tony (Nicholas Hoult),  helps him through a serious head injury

Attempts to hurt himself...




Shows his butt....

Tussles with homophobic Muslim student Anwar (Dev Patel) but manages to remain his friend, then date him...

Is stalked by a female student with a crush on him...










Gets a boyfriend named James (Jack O'Connell), and they leave the series together, along with Anwar.  





Playing a gay teenager on British tv got Mitch a lot of attention.  He made the cover of Attitude in March and October 2007, and posed nude in Cosmopolitan in 2008 to promote testicular cancer awareness.









After Skins, Mitch starred in Brittanica High (2008-09), about students in a London drama school.  His character, Danny Miller, is straight, the focus of "all of the girls" in the school, but he eventually narrows it down to New Girl Lauren and her enemy-turned-ally Claudia. There's a gay student, Jez (Matthew James Thomas), but his plot arc involves reconciling with his father.  No boyfriend.

Two more straight roles followed:

In Behaving Badly (2014), Nick (Nat Wolfe) is in love with Nina (Selena Gomez), but she is dating Kevin (Austin Stowell).  When they break up, Nick bets that he will be able to bed her before Labor Day.  Mitch plays a minor character, Steven Stevens

Nightlight (2015) is a found footage movie: When Robin (a girl) refuses to go to prom with Ethan (Kyle Fain), he ends up dead and then starts picking off her friends.  The two boys in the group are Chris (Carter Jenkins) and Ben (Mitch),


More after the break. Caution: Explicit.

Siblings, Episode 1.1 or 1.3: Dan falls for a guy who uses a wheelchair, so he pretends...with real n*de wheelchair guys


 Siblings is a Britcom (2014-16) now streaming on Amazon Prime, featuring lazy, amoral siblings Hannah and Dan (Charlotte Richie, Tom Stourton).  Reminds me of The Other Two, so let's take a look at "Wheelchair Conference," which the IMDB calls Episode 1.1, but Amazon Episode 3.3

Scene 1: At breakfast, Dan is describing a bank robbery that "really happened," but it turns out to be a movie.  Hannah has to rush to work (at 10:30), because she has a new boss who might expect her to show up. The old one was always drunk, and didn't notice whether she was there or not.

But what is Dan supposed to do while she is away?  "Go out and make a friend."


Scene 2: 
Hannah rushes into the office just as Drunk Boss is leaving.  He's been sacked for good for silly things like "gross incompetence."  Now she has to find a way to kiss up to the new boss

Cut to the coffee shop, where Dan approaches a Writer (Rob Carter, who is heterosexual) busily working on his novel (just work at home0.  He asks inane questions, and "jokes" that he's going to pour coffee on the guy's laptop.  But he slips, and actually does! (just work at home).  Friendship attempt thwarted, he leaves.

Scene 3: After a long day of trying unsuccessfully to make friends, Dan comes home to Hannah conducting extensive research on the new boss, looking for an angle.  The problem is, there are a lot of Annette Walkers online, so she has to learn about everything from Costa Rica to the University of Hull.

Ulp, there's a homeless guy named Biscuit in the house.  Time for a lot of jokes about how homeless people are disgusting, har har, and Dan is an idiot for inviting one home, har har.   About 40% of homeless youth are LGBT, kicked out by homophobic parents. A sizeable percentage are victims of physical and sexual abuse.


Scene 4:
At the office, Hannah tries to kiss up to the new boss by demonstrating her knowledge of Costa Rica and the University of Hull, but this is a different Annette Walker.  She's been going through the reports, and discovers that Kevin's  job encompasses Hannah's job, so one of them is redundant.  Hannah falsely accuses Kevin of being homophobic, so he'll be let go.  Interesting -- 20 years ago you would be fired for being gay, and now you're fired for being homophobic.

Kevin is played by Matthew Steer.  No intel on whether he's gay.

Uh-oh, Kevin is talking to the new boss about his report analyzing five years of appraisal statistics.  Hannah heads him off with "Weren't you saying last week that gay people shouldn't be allowed to live by the seaside?"  "Um...no."

The Boss can't work late tonight, because she's meeting her son for dinner, and she has to get the company car refitted for his wheelchair.  What a coincidence -- Kevin  had to get his car refitted for his mother-in-law's wheelchair!  Uh-oh, Hannah is out.

Or maybe not: "My brother Dan uses a wheelchair, too.  He's 23."

"My son is 23, too!  Why don't the two of you come to dinner with us tonight!" Setting them up on a date?

It takes a while to become accustomed to using a wheelchair.  


Scene 5
: Dan falls head-over-heels in love with the son, Charlie, who is a video game developer -- his dream job! And Charlie is impressed by the jokes that Dan's sister hates.  Dan asks him out on a date:

"Sorry, I have a basketball game tomorrow night, but you can come and watch.  We're playing in the semis."

"I've got a semi right now!" Thanks for sharing, buddy.

Charlie is played by David Proud, who uses a wheelchair in real life.  He is famous for his role as Adam Best, a snobbish Oxford student, on EastEnders, and is heterosexual in real life.

Back at dinner, Dan explains how he had the "accident" that led to his needing a wheelchair: he was jet-skiing in Puerto Rico with this smokin' hot supermodel -- incredible body -- and they were making out, and...dude, I don't care if your bi, but you won't attract gay men by talking about ladies with incredible bodies.


Scene 6
: Boss Annette invites Heather to a business weekend, where they will be staying "in a hotel" (tell me more, tell me more)

Cut to the wheelchair basketball team in a pub after the game (hey, no fair -- I wanted to see some of the game).  Dan asks Charlie to stay with him "for the rest of my life."  Too soon, dude!

Left; Random n*de guy who uses a wheelchair.

Then Dan  invites Charlie for a sleepover: "Of course, we won't be doing much sleeping!"  Charlie balks, a straight dude not realizing that Dan has been hitting on him, so he backtracks "Because we'll be watching films and stuff, not sex."

More after the break

Matt Smith: Who doesn't want to see the penis of Prince Philip, Charles Manson, Christopher Isherwood, Superworm, and Dr. Who?

 


We've been watching the 2011 series of Doctor Who, the seemingly endless British sci-fi series that sends the last remaining Time Lord through time and space to save Earth, an alien planet, or the entire universe.  Again and again.  Oddly, when his world-saving takes him to modern day Britain, there are plenty of exteriors, but when it is a distant planet or the far future, all we see are endless corridors. 

Doctors regenerate every few years, getting new bodies and personalities.  Right now it's Matt Smith, an effervescent, jokey type, with an inner trauma that sometimes comes out.  After all, he saw the destruction of his people, and he's over 1,000 years old, so dozens of human companions have died, gotten lost, or left him to go on with their lives.

Matt Smith has appeared as the Doctor in dozens of projects outside the show itself: videos exploring odd corners of his universe, video games, a lot of four-episode miniseries, spin-offs starring former companions Sarah Jane and Amy Pond

The children's program Blue Peter

Comic Relief: Red Nose Day, An Adventure in Time and Space...I got tired of counting.  You have to be British to really understand his amazing popularity.


The Doctor would be enough for a career, but Matt has played a wide range of other characters, mostly based on real people:

Christopher Isherwood, the gay author of A Passage to India and Maurice, in Christopher and His Kind, a 2011 adaption of his memoirs. Left, the one without the biceps.

Rowing star Bert Bushnell in Bert & Dickie, 2012.  Neither was gay.


Prince Philip, the consort of Queen Elizabeth, in The Crown, 2016-7.

Robert Maplethorpe, the controversial gay artist, in Mapplethorpe: The Director's Cut , 2018  

Left, the one with the ring

Hippie cult leader Charles Manson in Charlie Say, 2018


Plus a variety of fictional characters. As far as I can tell, they're all heterosexual.  I guess he only takes gay roles if they're of historical significance.

A detective fighting witchcraft.

An evil clone with a nice bulge.

A zombie-fighting parson in the Regency era.


The case worker of a refugee family facing evil

An evil spirit in the psychedelic 60s

A tourist in Morocco for whom things go terribly wrong

More Matt after the break

"Man in an Orange Shirt": Constantly depressed gay Brit hooks up, gets a boyfriend, plays cards with Gran. With bonus n*de Julians

 


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, below), 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. 

Marcus Hodson: Shape-shifting demon or hyper-masculine Midlands model? With nude merman bonus




On Dead Hot (2024), Marcus Hodson plays a shape-shifting demon, a hermetic Magus who travels between esoteric realms through the Eye of Horus bar and its mysterious Red Phone.  I wanted to know if he plays other mysterious Pucks or Lords of Misreason, but his IMDB listing is rather basic  Five roles, all 2022-2024: 

You Like That, a short about a gay American student in Edinburgh.

The Stand-up Sketch Show, where comedians perform "a surreal reconstruction of their own material."  Marcus is a background player in five episodes.

An episode of Domino Day, about a young witch "haunted by her need to feed on others." In Episode 2, Marcus plays a hookup who smooches with her and is eaten.


Gentleman in Moscow
is about a Russian aristocrat placed under house arrest in a hotel for the rest of his life after the 1917 revolution.  He befriends a little girl who also lives in the hotel; Marcus plays her piano teacher.

He also plays one of the mermen in The Little Mermaid.

Only one other paranormal show, and he doesn't even play a supernatural being?




Not many biographical details available. A 2021 article in Pause magazine states that he is 25 years old, from Manchester but living in London. He began modeling at age 18, then started university, but left to go pro.




In spite of the paucity of biographical details, Marcus has a very active social media presence, with hundreds of posts about travel, food, and beefcake. Here he is in Greece




In Rome









On the beach.  Does Marcus have a palsy disorder in his left hand, or is he displaying some magickal gestures?





More after the break

"The Holiday Exchange": Immensely wealthy A-gays look for love at Christmas. Watch with your grandmother

  


It's not even Halloween yet, but the romcoms are started.  

Darn, they all have such interchangeable titles that I forgot which one I'm reviewing. Oh, right, The Holiday Exchange, on Amazon Prime.  

The icon shows a woman torn between two men, and the blurb is about a guy going on a "holiday exchange" that he found on a gay app, so I suspect some "mistaken for gay" jokes as the guy finds the Girl of His Dreams.

Scene 1: A guy wearing an eye mask and a frilly shirt wakes up -- gay. Close-up of a photo of him and his boyfriend -- gay.  He knocks it over, drinks some booze, and shaves and applies femme moisterizer products -- gay. 

A guy texts: "Wilde, call me back," but he ignores it.  Moisturizer guy is named Wilde, like Oscar?  Gay. He's played by Taylor Frey, top photo, who also wrote the screenplay.


Knock on the door: It's femme fashion designer Chase, Colton Tran, and a woman, with ideas for his wedding outfit: "Your Mom told us that your Big Day was coming."

"Nope, you misunderstood, I'm not getting married, I'm selling my company."

"Oh, well, we have ideas for that, too."

Wilde goes annoyingly over the top complementing Fashion Designer Chase; he is an angel, a shining light, goodness personified; he has created everlasting happiness for literally thousands of people by...um...designing their clothes. 

Back story: Wilde just dumped his boyfriend, Sean.


Scene 2:  
An idyllic village, over the top idyllic, Currier & Ives idyllic. 

George tells his business partner Oliver, Rick Cosnett, how they met, confesses to drinking too much, and then lays on the over-effusive praise.  

Oliver is also an angel, goodness personified, spearheading drives that raise billions for charity. He's single-handedly wiped out world hunger.  Don't introduce Oliver to Chase the Fashion Designer, or they'll cancel each other out.  

His problems: he is too busy with his day job as a divorce lawyer, his numerous charities, and taking over Dad's business when he retires to get a boyfriend. Coworker George is in favor of being single. This must be the "mistaken for gay" guy.



Wait -- they specifically state that they live in Los Angeles.  The establishing shot was a New England Currier & Ives village. What the fudge?

Out in the elegant party, Saintly Oliver talks to James, who works in his company.  They hedge around the discussion of why their last date was so awful. So Saintly Oliver and Moisturizer Wilde are both gay?  Who's going to hook up with the lady in the middle of the icon?  

No,  James "can't" get together during the holidays: he'll be seeing family, driving up the coast. Dude's not into you. 

I'm watching with subtitles, so I can't hear the accents, but these people are saying "Happy Christmas" to each other.  Could they live in Britain, but be having an elegant party in L.A.?

More after the break.

"Decline and Fall": Theology student sent down for immorality in 1930s Oxford, with Oxfordian dicks and bums

 


After Brideshead Revisited appeared on television in 1982, everyone thought that Evelyn Waugh was a gay writer, and started buying up the original novel from 1945, as well as his other novels, Decline and Fall and Vile Bodies.  Turns out that he was straight-ish, regretted the gay romances of his Oxford years, and thought of same-sex love as decadent and immoral, or at best adolescent experimentation that you give up once you are old enough for the "real love" of a woman.   So I don't expect the  2017 BBC adaption of his Decline and Fall, streaming on Amazon Prime, to have any gay characters. 

Or maybe not.  Waugh derived the title and central theme from The Decline and Fall of the West, by Otto Spengler, which theorizes that societies inevitably decline into moral decadence.  Including LGBT people.  So maybe there will be some homophobia.


Scene 1
: The Bollinger Club at Scone College, Oxford -- har, har -- is trashing their common room.  Meanwhile, quiet theology student Paul Pennyfeather  (Jack Whitehall, top photo) is sitting quietly with his friend Potts (Matthew Beard, left), who wants to go to a church tomorrow and "make some rubbings."  He means rubbings of tombstones, but...har, har.  Paul refuses, whereupon the friend says "I'll make some rubbings for you."  I'll bet you will...

On his way home, Paul runs afoul of the Bollinger Club, who strip him naked and force him to run across the quad.  Although he is not responsible, he is expelled from Oxford for "moral malfeasance."  

Scene 2: Generally men sent down for moral failings become schoolmasters, and there's a position available in Llanaba, Wales, to teach English, French, German, Latin, and coach cricket.  Paul doesn't speak German, but the job agent tells him to fake it.


Scene 3:
Paul arrives at Llanaba, finds his way to the school, which is actually quite ornate, and is introduced to Captain Grimes (Douglas Hodge),  just as he is disciplining a student for whistling.  The other students were whistling, too, but "it makes no difference."  He gets 100 lines, and next time a beating. 

Then the Headmaster  and his daughters, whom Paul snubs.  Not into girls, are you?  He's in charge of the fifth form (15-16 year olds), games, carpentry,  and fire drill, and he'll be giving Best-Chedwyth organ lessons.  "But I don't play the organ."  "You do now."

Scene 4: The shabby Fifth Form classroom.  Headmaster advises Paul not to mention why he was sent down, and rushes away.. The students make fun of "Good morning" and role call, lock his desk drawer, and give him trick chalk. 

Scene 5: After the first class debacle, he rushes to the common room, and meets the hard-drinking Prendergast:  "You'll hate it here.  I do.  We all do."  Then to his room to unpack his stuff and be depressed.

Cut to dinner: teachers have to eat with their students. Paul is still depressed, the students still disrespectful, the food greenish slop.  



Afterwards, Captain Grimes escorts him to the pub. They discuss the Headmaster's two daughters; Grimes is engaged to "the haybale," leaving "the male one" for Paul.

About the Fifth Formers: Don't try to teach them anything, just keep them quiet and beat them.  Grimes isn't cut out for teaching; he keeps getting sacked at private schools for "doing things," but fortunately he's a public school alumnus so he always gets another job. In Britain, "public schools" are like the private schools in America.  

During the War, he "did something" that almost resulted in a firing squad, but because he was a public school alumnus, they just transfered him to Ireland, where you can "do things" without penalty.  Same-sex acts?  But they wouldn't get you a death sentence in Britain at the time

The leering Philbrick (Stephen Graham, left) approaches and asks if either of them would fancy a woman tonight. You got any men? They refuse.  Grimes says that he doesn't really fancy women.

More after the break