The glossy, groundbreaking lesbian drama returns after 10 years, for a reboot that marries a more inclusive take on LGBTQ lives with brilliantly messy, soapy plots
After 10 years away, The L Word has returned with a shiny new reboot, The L Word: Generation Q (Sky Atlantic). The glossy LA lesbian drama was a cultural touchstone for many queer women, and it broke boundaries with its fun, soapy and often explicit depictions of a certain kind of wealthy Californian elite. But over the course of its original lifetime, to be a fan was to enter into a kind of weary pact with it, and its many flaws. Characters who were B or T on the LGBTQ spectrum were not treated with the greatest sensitivity. It had a tendency towards racial stereotyping. Its plots became so out there as to be borderline arthouse.
Generation Q is respectful to what came before it, while hastily dusting off the baggage its heritage entails. It combines old favourites with the horribly labelled “generation Q”, a younger set of more disparate queer men and women whose lives are intertwined with the old guard. So Bette (Jennifer Beals) is back and she’s running to be mayor of Los Angeles, Alice (Leisha Hailey) is hosting her own TV talk show (“fun, feminist … where you can drink coffee and wine”), and Shane (Katherine Moennig) arrives in the city after an absence of many years in the most preposterously Shane way possible: on a private jet – bringing the air hostess back to her new, empty mansion with her, and not for a cup of tea and a biscuit. It turns out that Shane – a character whose hair choices throughout the original were also borderline arthouse – has sold her successful chain of salons and is returning to the city that made her, carrying some heavy emotional baggage, yet soothed by lots and lots of money.
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