Shirinka or life

The new series of the HBO channel “Looking” (in Russia - “In the Search” ) begins with a scene where a bearded man, tensely sniffing, is trying to climb into his pants to a pretty young man. He noticeably nervous and, when his mobile calls, quickly retreats with an unbuttoned width, leaving secluded forest belt behind. Cruising-in the past, the hero of the series, 29-year-old Patrick, came here for laughter, then to share impressions with friends. Friends laugh: “We are proud of you. Now you are a pervert, wear this title with honor. ” Then it will become completely clear: in this episode, the creators of the series “In the Search” clearly declare - homosexuals left the battle underground and are ready to find not only rights, but also a normal life on the screen.

Previously, the orientation determined the Hea character, was a rod around which his existence on the screen rotated in one way or another: gays had to either suffer from oppression, or fight with injustice, or decide on a camming out in the circle of relatives and friends. The basis of homosexuality was necessarily a conflict, and only then love, passion and other little things. “In the search” leaves the usual schemes: its heroes have long been comfortable with their own orientation, and they live in San Francisco, where Harvey Milk was at one time. In other words, the characters “in the search” have no altar that should put their life on: they need to figure out what the hell is to do with this life. Like all of us.

Patrick 29, he works in the game development industry and is desperately looking for a serious relationship. Agustin is a little older (he is 31) - a failed artist who gathers his boyfriend in the first episode. The third hero, a house who is almost 40, is still a waiter in a restaurant, interrupting disposable affairs with partners twice as younger. All three are in the search for something real (the slogan of the series), their friendly company fits into the map of the serial world somewhere between Sex and the City and Girls .

There really is a common one: a group of friends in search of love and not only-against the background of a city that unobtrusively becomes another main character (in Sex and the City and Girls these are different areas of New York, here is the already mentioned San Francisco). But the “looking” has no briskness of “sex in the big city” and the ruthlessness of the “girls”: for example, in the fourth series of the current Girls season it turned out that the heroine of Lina Danam, in general, the selfish, clinically not capable of empathy (the episode was called: “Dead Inside” ). The creators of “In Search” are treated with much more sympathy and tenderness. Despite the scenes of group sex and searching for Google pictures of hot uncircumed guys, an atmosphere of genuine chastity is hovering on the screen.

Jonathan Groff (Patrick), without hesitation, performed Bohemian Rhapsody in the Glee Redense, like an eighth -grader, when a bearded Latinos in a cap and a tracksuit rolled up to him. The author of the New York Post Gregory E. Miller, admitted that he, as gay, was uncomfortable to watch the series, because he was not used to seeing his real life - how he actually talks, flirts, suffers, on the screen, wrote best of all. “It scares that anyone can now turn on the TV and see this world, which is part of me.”

Director Andrew Hay (Wick End ", 2011), who set most of the series of the first season, and Showranner Michael Lannan, who will make his debut here in this role are responsible. They speak with a special intonation that is unusual for TV, and this is simultaneously the strength and weakness of the new show - it has a charm, but there is no drive. This quiet gay revolution may seem to many to be too domestic, relaxed, toothless, fresh, after all. Here, ironically referring to gay stamps (Patrick is developing a game in which pumped up sailors beat each other), chuckle over emoticons and, not without reason, claim that Instagram filters help from strabismus. “In the search” does not make high -profile political statements - a spectator, spoiled by the golden age of television, is used to a more twisted intrigue and sweeping gestures. Nothing of the kind in the series, which has already reached until half past season, has not been noticed.

Nevertheless, after the series “In Search”, the gay-theme on television will no longer be the same-before our eyes it ceases to be a rattle for wrestlers for minority rights, a scarecrow for alarmed guards and a trump card for demagogues in expensive costumes. She gains naturalness - what else is needed?