Netflix Is So Gay

I’m going to go ahead and say it – Netflix is owned by the gay community and more specifically, by lesbians. Not literally, I’m sure the Netflix HQ is full of straight men drooling over Megan Fox, but in terms of the actual content, it’s totally gay dominated. Now I’m sure my search results are biased, I actively searched for ‘Blue Is The Warmest Colour’ and  ‘The L Word’ and since then my recommended list has been chock full of gay-friendly flicks, but I don’t think it’s down to my search results only.

When I think of the three most popular original series on Netflix I think of ‘Orange Is The New Black’, ‘Sense8’ and ‘Grace & Frankie’. Yes I’m fully aware that there are also a tonne of original series that don’t focus on the gay community but they seem to get less media attention. Maybe Netflix is more gay-friendly because it’s personalised. Or maybe it feels more gay friendly because they give us more than one gay character to sympathy-like, and yes, I’m looking at you Kate Moennig in Sky Atlantic’s ‘Ray Donovan’ not just because I want to (and believe me I want to).

Orange is the new black is arguably one of the biggest TV shows ever, even the straight community eat it up. It’s fantastic writing, brilliant characters, believable situations and lez drama all wrapped up in binge-friendly series. I can’t help but raise an exited fist in the air at the idea of a lesbian themed show ruling such a popular channel. That aside, the L word is always coming up on my Netflix as ‘popular on Netflix’ and that show finished in 2009. The show’s popularity hasn’t faded at all and, just like Orange is the new black, it isn’t solely enjoyed by lesbians.

Lesbian/bisexual zones aside, shows like Sense8 and Grace & Frankie deal with the gay community in an interesting and thought-provoking way. Grace & Frankie deals with coming out and the aftereffects of doing so; from the perspective of the person coming out but and also their partners’, the result is both funny and touching. Sense8 deals with a cisgender woman dating a transgender woman and it’s beautiful. There’s an abundance of LGBT movies on Netflix too and it’s pretty evenly balanced between movies on gay women and gay men. It seems that for every ‘Brokeback Mountain’ there’s a ‘Better Than Chocolate’…