Queer worldbuilding in mainstream Anglophone television

Abstract

This article explores the representation of LGBTQ+ characters on Anglophone television and theorises the emergence of the ‘queer storyworld’ across markets of the US, UK, Australia, and Canada from the 1990s to the 2020s. Bringing queer theory and television studies into dialogue, we conceptualise queer televisual worldbuilding as a mode of representation that foregrounds ensembles of LGBTQ+ characters and situates them within distinctly queer community contexts. We trace a shift from early portrayals of singular, isolated LGBTQ+ characters to the emergence of diverse queer friendship groups in television narratives. Building on this, we analyse how mainstream televisual storytelling has moved beyond simplified ‘coming out’ narratives to depict more complex and nuanced representations of queer experiences and communities. We then investigate how LGBTQ+ characters and narratives are situated within distinctly queer settings, and how these spaces contribute to the construction of televisual worlds. Finally, we consider the role of authorship, highlighting how an ‘out’ authorial presence shapes the development and legitimation of queer ensemble dramas and comedies. Ultimately, we argue that queer storyworlds harness television’s worldbuilding capacity to imagine queer worlds, offering audiences complex representations of LGBTQ+ life.

Introduction

For much of Anglophone televisual history, LGBTQ+ characters have been represented through a distinctly heterosexual lens where they have often been portrayed as disconnected from queer friends, relationships, places, and communities. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, series such as Queer as Folk (UK; 1999–2000), Queer as Folk (US; 2000–2005) and The L Word (2004–2009) reflected a significant shift in the representation of queerness on Anglophone television, establishing a format that we describe as the ‘queer storyworld’. To date, the term ‘queer storyworld’ has been mobilised in academic literature without sustained theorisation (O’Meara and Monaghan, 2025; Young and Herbig, 2020). It typically refers to ensemble dramas and comedies that focus on the social dynamics of LGBTQ+ communities where heterosexual characters are peripheral to the action. Building upon existing literature on televisual worldbuilding (Sconce, 2004; Tischleder, 2017), queer worldmaking (Dennin et al., 2024; Muñoz, 1999), and queer storyworlds (O’Meara and Monaghan, 2025; Young and Herbig, 2020), we use this article to develop a theorisation of the queer storyworld in an Anglophone context, focussing on its capacity for ‘queer televisual worldbuilding’. Interrogating how queer worldbuilding is achieved in LGBTQ+ ensemble dramas produced within the Anglophone televisual markets of the US, UK, Australia, and Canada, our research focuses on the powerful layering of queerness through character, narrative, setting and community.

We begin by bringing queer theory and television studies together to develop a theorisation of queer televisual worldbuilding. We mobilise this in our analysis of character, focussing on the shift from singular isolated LGBTQ+ characters to diverse friendship groups that occurred throughout the 1990s and 2000s. Building on this, we demonstrate how televisual narratives have moved beyond simplified coming out stories to present complex and nuanced portrayals of queer experiences and community. We then consider how these characters and narratives are situated within queer settings. Finally, we examine the authorship of LGBTQ+ ensemble dramas and comedies, highlighting the role of an ‘out’ authorial presence in the development of queer storyworlds. Through our analysis, we find that queer storyworlds leverage the worldbuilding capacity of scripted television to imagine queer worlds, communities and futures.

Approaching the queer storyworld

To understand how television drama develops and mobilises queer storyworlds, we adopt a mixed methodology that combines quantitative content analysis and qualitative textual analysis. To paint a full picture of queer television in the Anglophone televisual landscape, we integrate extratextual and contextual research throughout our analysis. We first conducted a content analysis through which we identified, logged and counted (Harwood and Garry, 2003: 481) LGBTQ+ ensemble dramas in the Anglophone markets of the US, UK, Australia, and Canada from the 1990s to the 2020s. Our initial list included 69 titles such as Will & Grace (1998–2006, 2017–2020), Sex Education (2019–2023), Pose (2018–2021), When We Rise (2017), It’s a Sin (2021), Eastsiders (2012–2019), Noah’s Arc (2005–2006), Tales of the City (1993). While we acknowledge this list may have some omissions, it represents the breadth of LGBTQ+ ensemble dramas that are accessible to us as researchers. After narrowing the list to a sample of representative titles that included Cucumber (2015), Faking It (2014–2016), In Our Blood (2023), Outland (2012), Queer as Folk (UK), Queer as Folk (US), Sort Of (2021–2023), The L Word, and Will & Grace we completed a qualitative textual analysis focussed on close readings of the representation of LGBTQ+ characters and their relationships, the narratives of each series, and the community settings that serve as the location for queer worldbuilding efforts. The textual analysis involved close viewing of selected episodes alongside the examination of contextual information such as series synopses and episode descriptions on aso.gov.au, australiantelevision.net, wikipedia.org, and IMDB.com. Finally, we conducted a search of extratextual materials relating to each series (reviews, interviews, and commentary) to examine how an ‘out’ authorial presence was discursively constructed.

We approach this analysis from our respective positions as screen and media studies researchers. We are both white, Australian-born settlers that identify as queer and cisgender. Significant to our positionality is our shared experience of growing up in heteronormative Australian towns and cities through the 1990s and early 2000s, where onscreen representations of LGBTQ+ characters and communities were treasured glimpses of worlds outside of our own. From these shared experiences, our analysis focuses on the significance of these glimpses of queer communities and LGBTQ+ social worlds, exploring how they are developed through television storytelling. While our research adopts a frame of analysis that prioritises sexuality and gender identity, we acknowledge that there are other intersectional ways to examine the many series that have depicted queer storyworlds.

Queer Televisual Worldbuilding

We use the term ‘queer storyworld’ throughout this article to refer to a range of television series that emphasise the social dynamics of an ensemble of LGBTQ+ characters, offering layered and complex narratives that are set within queer community contexts. Expanding upon the use of the term within scholarship on queer ensemble television (Young and Herbig, 2020), we strategically situate this terminology through literature on television’s worldbuilding capacity. Babette Tischleder reminds us that televisual storytelling offers something unique in terms of narrative structure, whereby ‘narrative time gradually builds up, extends, and ‘thickens,’ especially if it interweaves a number of parallel plotlines’ (Tischleder, 2017: 120). This thickness of story, she later argues, is a key aspect of television’s capacity for ‘imaginative world building’ (Tischleder, 2017: 122). Jeffrey Sconce similarly emphasises the value of the ‘complex sense of community’ that is established through television, where the development of the storyworld is as important as the narrative threads (Sconce, 2004: 95). For Sconce, television series can ‘create worlds that viewers gradually feel they inhabit along with the characters’ (Sconce, 2004: 95). He links this to Horace Newcomb’s 1970s notion of ‘cumulative narrative’ (Newcomb, 1974) to highlight the ‘cumulative world building’ capacity of contemporary television (Sconce, 2004: 100). With this in mind, we consider queer storyworlds to be uniquely televisual, emerging through the kind of ongoing character and narrative development that is at the heart of the televisual form. Throughout this article, we argue that it is not only spectacle, cliffhangers, and dramatic story arcs that contribute to queer worldbuilding, but also the mundane everydayness of television that enable us to see narrative worlds unfold episode by episode, gradually, over time. Through this, queer storyworlds orient the audience within the world of the characters. Importantly, they present layers of queerness in communities, nightclubs, cafes, neighbourhoods and homes, friendships, relationships and families, sex, in-jokes and pop culture references, making it feel like the queer world of the characters has a long history.

Our definition of worldbuilding also builds on ideas of queer worldmaking as evoked in queer theory. Muñoz (1996) outlines this concept in ‘Ephemera as Evidence: Introductory Notes to Queer Acts’ and further in Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics (1999), where he describes ‘worldmaking performances’ of minoritarian subjects that ‘have the ability to establish alternate views of the world’ (Muñoz, 1999: 195). For Muñoz, these are utopian imaginings and counterpublics that simultaneously deconstruct and reshape heteronormative and majoritarian realities. Berlant and Warner (1998) also describe queer worldmaking in ‘Sex in Public’ when they imagine the radical possibilities of queer culture. Berlant and Warner describe queer worldmaking as ‘a project’ that moves beyond normalising queerness to ‘support forms of affective, erotic, and personal living that are public in the sense of accessible, available to memory, and sustained through collective activity’ (Berlant and Warner, 1998: 562). That is, rather than carving out spaces for LGBTQ+ communities to be assimilated into mainstream heteronormative culture, queer worldmaking opens up queer possibilities. Building on this, Hailey N Otis and Thomas R Dunn describe queer worldmaking as ‘the project of building affirming queer life worlds within, among, and between persistently heteronormative and anti-queer societies’(Otis and Dunn, 2021: no page). In this frame, we recognise that the queer storyworld asserts itself, in big and small ways, carving out a distinctly queer place in the otherwise mainstream space of television.

Queer theories about worldmaking have previously been applied to television by Young and Herbig (2020: 71) in their analysis of the Netflix series Sense8 (2015–2018), where they emphasise the ‘building of worlds that queer (as a verb) time, space, and relationships in ways that beckon questions about how we have traditionally conceived narrative’. Similarly, Dennin et al. (2024) examine ‘queer figured worlds’ in three contemporary animated series where worldmaking is used to ‘emphasize the queer elements of the shows and contribute to a queer imaginary’ (Dennin et al., 2024: 120). Dennin, Black and Alexander usefully elaborate on this, arguing that queer figured worlds are unique in that they are often led by LGBTQ+ creators and:

go beyond mere representation of often stereotypically queer characters. They include a robust cast of queer characters that often defy classification, as well as a queered world that offers life possibilities for queer characters that defy both hetero-and homonormative social and cultural contexts (Dennin et al., 2024: 120)

While these studies have made productive links between queer worldmaking and television, they are tightly focussed on a small pool of texts, selected from relatively contemporary television produced in the US from the mid-2010s onwards. In addition, by concentrating on science fiction and fantasy television, they closely align the concept of queer worldmaking with the speculative worldbuilding of these genres. What remains underexplored is the operation of queer televisual worldbuilding beyond the US, across a wider range of televisual forms, and across different historical moments.

We address these gaps by bringing queer theory and television studies perspectives together to argue that it is the ongoing seriality of television storytelling coupled with queer authorship that offers a unique opportunity for queer worldbuilding. That is, the serial nature of a televisual queer storyworld, provides the time, space, and setting for queer worldbuilding to take place. The focus on an LGBTQ+ community setting enables such storytelling to eschew cishetero assumptions, foregrounding distinctly queer experiences. And finally, authorship practices become significant in translating the specificity and diversity of LGBTQ+ lives to the screen. In the analyses that follow, we highlight how worldbuilding efforts have been mobilised in a range of LGBTQ+ ensemble dramas and comedies from the 1990s to the 2020s across the US, UK, Australia, and Canada. As we demonstrate, queer characterisation, narrative, setting, and authorship serve vital roles in queer televisual worldbuilding as they are integrated within televisual storytelling to imagine queer worlds, communities and futures.

Characters, friends, relationships

We begin our thinking about queer worldbuilding on television through the representation of LGBTQ+ characters in central roles. By offering of an ensemble of these characters, nuanced friendships and relationships can be explored. Within queer television studies, there are significant debates about the inclusion and representation of LGBTQ+ characters. Though some scholars have claimed that until the early 2000s, ‘gay characters appeared only occasionally and generally in secondary roles’ (Battles and Hilton-Morrow, 2002: 88), others highlight the enduring presence of queerness on the small screen (Miller, 2019). With this in mind, we recognise the 1990s as a moment of heightened visibility with LGBTQ+ identity entering the mainstream as gay, lesbian and bisexual characters and queer themes began being explored with more regularity. Popular US series such as L.A. Law (1986–1994), Picket Fences (1992–1996), Roseanne (1988–1997; 2018), Relativity (1996–1997), Seinfeld (1989–1998), Friends (1994–2004) featured episodes about LGBTQ+ characters and themes. Also notable was Ellen DeGeneres coming out (S4E22–23 ‘The Puppy Episode’ 1997) in her sitcom Ellen (1994–1998). In Canada, series such as E.N.G (1991–1994), The City (1999–2000), Liberty Street (1995–1996), Riverdale (1997–2000) introduced LGBTQ+ characters. This was also echoed in the UK where LGBTQ+ storylines were introduced in soaps such as Brookside (1982–2000) and EastEnders (1985–present). In Australia, procedural dramas such as Blue Heelers (1994–2006), Fire (1995–1996), G.P. (1989–1996) broke a drought of queer representation from the preceding decade. While these were not the first televisual depictions of LGBTQ+ identity, they sparked significant academic and popular interest in the visibility and mainstreaming of queer life (Dow, 2001). Although occasionally focussing on romantic pairings or offering glimpses of a world beyond the heterosexual norm, the LGBTQ+ characters in these series were often the only queer presence within the heteronormative worlds depicted by each show. Moreover as Dennis Allen highlights, mainstream television was dominated by a ‘heterosexual imaginary’ that limited the opportunity for development of queer characters and stories (Allen, 1995: 610).

It is within this context that we recognise the queer worldbuilding achieved by UK mini-series Tales of the City (1993) and More Tales of the City (1998), and the US series Will & Grace, where queer storyworlds were constructed through the centrality of LGBTQ+ characters. Will & Grace is significant among these three as the first mainstream US sitcom to focus on two gay lead characters. The series revolved around the long-term friendship between best friends Will (Eric McCormack), a gay lawyer, and Grace (Debra Messing), a heterosexual interior designer. Alongside these primary characters were friends Jack (Sean Hayes), a highly camp gay actor, and Karen (Megan Mullally), a socialite that worked as Grace’s assistant. Over eight seasons, each consisting of 22–27 half-hour episodes, the sitcom explored modern life and often focussed on dating and relationships. The presence of two gay characters within the sitcom enabled it to explore some aspects of gay identity and queer culture.

Writing in the early 2000s, Kathleen Battles and Wendy Hilton-Morrow argued that Will & Grace ‘makes the topic of homosexuality more palatable to a large, mainstream television audience. . . situating it within safe and familiar popular culture conventions, particularly those of the situation comedy genre’ (Battles and Hilton-Morrow, 2002: 89). A key aspect of this was the consistent grouping of characters into opposite gender pairs. That is, despite featuring two gay friends, Will and Jack, the series more regularly focussed on the relationship between titular characters Will and Grace, which was often mirrored in the friendship between Jack and Karen. As Battles and Hilton-Morrow highlight, ‘it is in these heterosocial dyads. . .that the characters find their most successful relationships’ (Battles and Hilton-Morrow, 2002: 92).

While this might suggest Will & Grace presented queer identity through a heterosexual and indeed heteronormative lens, we recognise the ‘cumulative world building’ (Sconce, 2004: 100) of the series that enabled it to explore nuances of the gay characters, their friendship, and budding relationships. By focussing on a friendship between Will and Jack, the series pushed beyond earlier representations where multiple gay characters were included only when a romantic or sexual relationship between them was central to the plot. Instead, by focussing on the long-term friendship between gay men, Will & Grace challenged tokenistic representation and created spaces to explore relationality within gay communities. For instance, in the first season, Will calls Jack a ‘fag’ (S1E19 ‘Will Works Out’ 1998). Jack later challenges Will causing him to reflect on his own discomfort with his sexuality, and his anti-effeminate stance being a product of his own internalised homophobia. At times, though constrained by the commercial format, Will & Grace also offered audiences glimpses of a world beyond the primary characters, occasionally including brief storylines with secondary LGBTQ+ characters including love interests for Jack and Will, intersex character Lorraine Finster (Minnie Driver) who appeared for seven episodes, and regular gestures to Karen’s bisexuality. Reading Will & Grace as an early queer storyworld, we argue that it included elements that gestured to a broader, queerer world inhabited by the LGBTQ+ characters, even if the restrictions of commercial television in the US prevented the series from representing this world in detail. Further, the reboot in 2017 attempted to provide a more fulsome queer storyworld utilising the original format of their ensemble.

A year after Will & Grace’s premiere in the US, Queer as Folk was broadcast in the UK. While Will & Grace explored some aspects of gay identity and made gestures to the queer world of the characters, Queer as Folk (UK) centralised an ensemble of queer friends for the first time in television history, placing heterosexual characters at the periphery of its storyworld. In S01E01 ‘Thursday’, the series opened with a monologue introducing the audience to Vince (Craig Kelly), Phil (Jason Merrells), and Stuart (Aiden Gillen) as they head home after a night out at gay club, Babylon. In voiceover narration, Vince explains, ‘so it’s getting late, lights on. I haven’t copped off. Phil’s not copped off. And Stuart. . . Stuart’s copped off’ as camera tracks Vince and Phil (Jason Merrells) walking through the crowd as patrons leave the nightclub. In the foreground of the shot, Stuart (Aiden Gillen) passionately kisses a man in a phonebooth. While audiences of Will & Grace waited for two seasons for a gay kiss (S2E14 ‘Acting Out’ 2000), Queer as Folk (UK) showed this in the opening minutes, centralising queer sex and relationships as a core facet of character’s lives and the series’ storyworld.

As the episode unfolds, it follows young gay man, Nathan (Charlie Hunnam) and his entry into the queer community via this friendship group: Vince, Phil, and Stuart, as well as lesbian characters Lisa and Romey, and their broader network of friends. Then, across the remaining nine episodes of the series, Queer as Folk (UK) unfurled the complex dynamics of this community, introducing storylines about sex and sexuality, familial rejection after coming out, finding safety and found family in queer places, substance use and abuse, and the complexities of navigating queer and heterosexual worlds. While LGBTQ+ characters were previously at the periphery of television, often as supporting or temporary characters, they were centralised within the world presented through Queer as Folk (UK).

Several other series in the 2000s shifted the focus towards an almost exclusively queer storyworld. These included US series Angels in America (2003) and The L Word, as well as US/Canadian series Rick & Steve: The Happiest Gay Couple in the World (2007–2009) and the US remake of Queer as Folk. Writing about The L Word in 2010, Pei-Wan Lee and Michaela Meyer identify that ‘the characters on the show have little to no contact with anyone other than the members of their elite inner circle. Family, friends, and to much extent the heterosexual world in general, are decidedly absent’ (Lee and Meyer, 2010: 244). Although Lee and Meyer view this critically, arguing that ‘it encourages disassociation, polarisation, and ultimately separatism that will continue to reinforce the hegemonic relationship between straight and queer’ (Lee and Meyer, 2010: 245), we regard this as an important televisual shift towards centralising queer characters, relationships and friendships within televisual storytelling. For us, this reflects a shift away from depicting LGBTQ+ characters through a heterosexual lens as series of the late-1990s and 2000s began to explore the world from a queer point of view.

It is the 2010s that we begin to see what Dennin, Black and Alexander describe as ‘a robust cast of queer characters that often defy classification ‘(Dennin et al., 2024: 120). A core example is the teen series Faking It (2014–2016), which often explored the incoherence of identity, bringing a more nuanced and potentially queerer lens to issues of characterisation. As Mitchell highlights, Faking It is a unique teen series that challenges the idea of a ‘stable’ identity by depicting a range of ‘more nuanced representations of sexual identity and a more revelatory glance at performed sexualities’ (Mitchell, 2015: 455). The series focuses on Amy and Karma, two best friends that pretend to be queer to gain social credibility at their progressive high school. Within their friendship group are a wide range of LGBTQ+ characters in main and supporting roles, including gay, bisexual, trans and intersex friends, enemies and siblings. Early in the first season, Amy realises that she is not straight, though spends the entire series rejecting all identity labels placed upon her by other characters. At one point, she delivers an impassioned monologue to her classmates where she states that ‘no one should be pressured to slap on a label so that someone else can define them’ (S03E08 ‘Untitled’ 2017).

As examples such as Will & Grace, Queer as Folk and Faking It highlight, the inclusion of multiple LGBTQ+ characters and the foregrounding of social dynamics of queer friendship groups is a powerful strategy for queer worldbuilding. This has enabled series to move beyond representations of singular, solitary LGBTQ+ characters and craft storyworlds where complex understandings of queerness is at the centre of televisual storytelling.

Televisual seriality and Queer Narratives

Alongside television’s common depiction of singular, solitary LGBTQ+ characters, the existence of queerness itself has often been the only possible storyline for LGBTQ+ characters on the small screen. Writing in the 1990s, Allen condemns ‘the continual, abrupt foreclosure of any gay plot’ in Melrose Place (1992–1999) as the series inclusion of gay character Matt (Doug Savant) was recurrently framed around narratives of disclosure. Though Matt was introduced as a gay character and was already ‘out’ to friends, his storylines often focussed on ‘the revelation of homosexuality’ (Allen, 1995: 610): his boyfriend’s coming out, concealing a relationship, and the disclosure of HIV status. When the series did include a gay kiss, the focus was not on the romance of the moment but on the reaction of a heterosexual onlooker. As Allen notes, the ‘displacement of visual attention from homo-romance to hetero-discovery suggests yet again that the only possible gay narrative is that gayness exist’ (Allen, 1995: 611). It is a narrative, we observe, is countered through a queer ensemble drama where the existence of queerness is ubiquitous, and therefore the potential of televisual seriality can be explored.

Queer storyworlds move beyond these heterocentric narratives of LGBTQ+ life to present complex and nuanced portrayals of queer identities, experiences and community. As we have noted, series such as Will & Grace, Queer as Folk and The L Word were significant for the way they introduced ‘out’ LGBTQ+ characters in the opening minutes and rejected narratives of disclosure in favour of constructing layered storylines about queer lives and communities. However, beyond this characterisation and through the seriality of televisual storytelling, it is also that LGBTQ+ representation is able to ‘establish alternate views of the world’ (Muñoz, 1999: 195). As Muñoz highlights, queer worldmaking practices work to deconstruct and reshape heteronormative and majoritarian realities, which aligns with Dennin, Black and Alexander’s understanding of queer figured worlds that produce ‘life possibilities for queer characters that defy both hetero-and homonormative social and cultural contexts’ (Dennin et al., 2024: 120). We see this in similar ways to how queer cinema embodies the ‘interrelated yet contradictory quests, pursued simultaneously both within and against. . .straight norms and straight institutions’ including for the seeking of ‘friendship, community, and love’ (Nowlan, 2010: 19).

The Australian miniseries Outland (2012) is a rich example of this. The first Australian series to feature an entire cast of gay and lesbian characters, Outland was created with the goal of rejecting the coming out narrative. It focussed on a group of friends, Max (Toby Truslove), Rae (Christine Anu), Andy (Paul Ireland), Fab (Adam Richard) and Toby (Ben Gerrard), all members of a gay science fiction fan club. Focussing each episode on a particular character while weaving narrative threads across the season, Outland explored sexual subcultures and relationships. Notably, the dominance of cisgender gay white men in the queer scene was a returning theme, represented through the lone presence of Indigenous, lesbian, wheelchair user Rae, who must advocate her place throughout each episode. Though it consisted of only six episodes, all under 30 minutes, the story explored the intra-community tensions faced by each of its five primary characters with nuance and humour, getting beyond the typical narratives about queerness to explore social dynamics that had never been seen on Australian television.

Also operating in the miniseries format, UK series Cucumber (2015) took on the story of middle-aged, gay suburban life. The series opened with an air of life led under the tenets of gay respectability politics (Strolovitch and Crowder, 2018) with partners Henry Best (Vincent Franklin) and Lance Sullivan (Cyril Nri) living the idealised partnered, gay suburban life. But it is how the series takes this idealised narrative of queer life (Nguyen, 2023) being shattered that makes it an important deviation from narratives focussed solely on the existence of queerness. Henry and Lance separate – in part due to Henry’s erectile dysfunction – and face the realisation that despite the world appearing accepting of their existence, it is not as safe nor accepting as it felt in their suburban bubble – one where they adhered to the tenets of gay respectability politics. One of the most striking developments of the story is when Lance – newly single and being actively pursued by a seemingly straight man, Daniel Coltrane (James Murray) – receives oral sex and ejaculates in his mouth. Daniel, unable to reconcile what has happened with his own identity crisis surrounding his sexuality, begins pacing the room. The camera goes close on Lance’s face, as he tries to make light of the situation. As Lance laughs off the incident, we see a golf club, swung by Daniel, embed in his head, killing him instantly. A series that begins as a seemingly fresh take on the midlife crisis narrative, takes a sudden and dark turn to bring the viewer back to the reality that life for gay men is not safe – much in the way queer people can find the real world becomes suddenly and unexpectedly unsafe – despite the acceptance some find in suburban settings.

More recent series are given more time to take the explorations of queer story further. The seriality of the story in Canadian series Sort Of (2021–2024), told across three seasons (24 total episodes), creates space to explore the complex politics of queer visibility and identity. Most of the characters in Sort Of are queer and trans. However, it is the complex relationship between protagonist Sabi (Bilal Baig, also co-creator of the series) and the supporting, sometimes antagonising, character Bessy (Grace Lynn Kung), where much of the narrative worldbuilding occurs. Sabi is a millennial gender-nonconforming Pakistani-Canadian person, introduced in the opening episodes as a part-time bartender and part-time nanny for Bessy’s children. Bessy is a queer woman in a straight-presenting relationship who falls into a coma in the first episode, leaving Sabi feeling obligated to take on more care for Bessy’s family. The backstory between the characters is not immediately revealed, but instead gradually uncovered through flashbacks across multiple episodes, offering glimpses of these moments until their meaning is conveyed: Bessy was the first person to ask Sabi about their pronouns, Sabi first felt like their authentic self in Bessy’s presence.

Drawing on our earlier link to Otis and Dunn’s articulation of queer worldmaking (Otis and Dunn, 2021: no page), Sort Of allows audiences witness both Sabi and Bessy carve out liveable lives for themselves. Both navigate between queer and non-queer spaces including the workplace, family home, bars and clubs, hospitals and medical settings, places of worship, and the suburbs. In season one, Bessy’s husband Paul (Gray Powell) and Sabi uncover that Bessy has been unhappy about her life. It is not until the second season that the source of this unhappiness is revealed to be the stifling pressure of heteronormative suburban life. While reconnecting with a former girlfriend as a means of reconnecting with her queerness, Bessy is overheard by her son Henry (Aden Bedard), leading to a conversation where she explains what queerness means to her: ‘The thing about the word ‘queer’ is that its expansive. It means different things to different people, and for me it just means that I don’t feel comfortable in the normal shapes of how to be’ (S02E06 ‘Sort of I Love You’). In this moment, which is not a revelatory narrative climax but rather an everyday moment of dialogue between the family, Bessy is finally able to express that she is queer and affirm that it does not change her family.

Sabi, on the other hand, navigates their own journey of self-discovery through romantic entanglements, friendships, and familial pressures. Throughout the series, Sabi is depicted as somewhat indecisive, often stuck in moments of uncertainty, ambiguity, and the expectations of others. Moments of indecision arise when Sabi is forced to make decisions about their life and future plans. Across the season, Sabi struggles with decisions: whether to move to Berlin, whether to remain a bartender at an inclusive queer bar/bookshop that affirms their identity, whether to take on additional care work as the nanny for Bessy’s family, or whether meet their father’s expectations to finish electrical school and become an electrician. Through these interwoven storylines that are drawn out across multiple episodes and seasons, Sabi finds themselves constructing a liveable queer life ‘within, among, and between persistently heteronormative and anti-queer societies’ (Otis and Dunn, 2021: no page), which leads to the third season in which Sabi affirms their queer trans identity.

As Sort Of draws to a close in the third season, Sabi decides to take steps towards medical transition and begins taking HRT (Hormone Replacement Therapy). Rejecting a traditional coming out narrative, where the disclosure of sexuality or gender identity is the narrative climax, Sabi gradually reveals this to friends across several episodes. Rather than trying to solidify Sabi’s identity as either a trans or nonbinary person, the series instead focuses on moments of self-discovery, affective responses (Sabi’s joy, rage, and frustration with the world around them) and the messiness of queerness, gender expression and identity. Ultimately, Sabi reaches a place where they are able to break free from the expectations of others and focus on their own happiness, finally making the decision in the final episode to follow their dreams and travel to Berlin. As Sabi and Bessy’s interwoven and complex storylines highlight, queer storyworlds move beyond simplified heterocentric narratives of LGBTQ+ life to present nuanced portrayals of queer identities, experiences, and community, which is enabled by both LGBTQ+ characters and narratives that open up queer possibility.

Setting: Spaces of queer community

In addition to character and narrative, queer worldbuilding occurs through the representation of queer settings or what we might also describe as ‘a queered world’ (Dennin et al., 2024: 120). For sociologist Amin Ghaziani, gay or queer neighbourhoods, otherwise known as ‘gaybourhoods’, are among the most recognisable queer community spaces. They typically have a geographic focal point, a unique queer culture, a concentration of LGBTQ+ community in residence, and LGBTQ+ commercial spaces such as ‘gay-owned and gay-friendly businesses, nonprofit organizations, and community centers’ (Ghaziani, 2014: 2). As Ghaziani highlights, queer neighbourhoods allow LGBTQ+ people ‘to find one another for friendship and fellowship, sex, dating, and love’ (Ghaziani, 2014: 2) while offering ‘refuge from ongoing heterosexual hostilities, hate crimes, discrimination, bigotry, and bias’(Ghaziani, 2014: 3). This is certainly true of the many LGBTQ+ series that construct their storyworlds within real ‘gaybourhoods’ such as West Hollywood, Canal Street in Manchester, the French Quarter in New Orleans, Pittsburgh’s Liberty Avenue, Toronto’s ‘gay village’ the Church/Wellesley area, and Sydney’s Oxford Street.

In many series, these queer neighbourhood settings are featured in the opening episodes as a means of introducing audiences to the world of the characters. In the original Queer as Folk and the US-Canadian remake, for example, the pilot episode features a naïve younger man (Nathan/Justin) asking someone for advice about where to ‘go out’. Though the responses vary, the overall message is that the ‘gaybourhood’ is a thriving site of LGBTQ+ community:

Depends what you’re after. If you want bastards, you go in there [points]. And if you want wankers, go in there [points]. And if you want selfish little mincing piss-tight dickheads, then pick a building, any building, it’s full of them. (Queer as Folk UK)

Depends what you’re looking for. You want twinkies, go to Boytoy. You want leather, go to the Meat Hook. You want snotty conceited assholes who think they’re better than everyone else, try Pistol. (Queer as Folk US)

Ghaziani suggests that for LGBTQ+ communities, queer neighbourhoods represent ‘a space of freedom’ for individuals to ‘discover the authenticity of who they are and celebrate it without being burdened by the tyranny of the closet or the culturally crushing weight of heteronormativity’ (Ghaziani, 2014: 3). While we do see this depicted in queer televisual storyworlds that are set within real queer neighbourhoods, we also recognise the television storytelling often carves out these spaces of freedom and authenticity within fictionalised bars and venues.

In The L Word, for example, café/bar The Planet is a hub of activity and site where queerness and identity is continually negotiated. In the opening minutes of the first episode, Bette (Jennifer Beals) and Tina (Laurel Holloman) collect their morning coffee and chat with friends, Shane (Katherine Moennig), Alice (Leisha Hailey), and Dana (Erin Daniels). Later in the episode, the café is the setting for their discussions about sperm donation, insemination, therapy, sexuality, dating, sex, the closet, shame, and coming out. The ease in which these conversations play out within the spaces of the café (at the bar, at tables, and in interstitial places such as doorways and bathrooms) suggests this location offers a similar ‘space of freedom’ (Ghaziani, 2014: 3) to the broader queer neighbourhood that it is located within.

The Australian mini-series In Our Blood offers a counterpart in the gay bar PATCHS, based on a real venue on Oxford Street that operated from 1976 to the early 1990s. In Our Blood follows an ensemble of LGBTQ characters through the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, with PATCHS serving as a site of political organisation, catharsis, found family, radical joy, mourning, and remembrance. The series opens with a narrator introducing the setting and situating it within the broader city: ‘Welcome to Sydney, 1983. It’s big and bold and you can get lost here and reinvent yourself. So every freak is packing their bags and coming to Sydney, the city of refuge. Because every freak needs a home, a culture, a language’. PATCHS is represented as a central location for Sydney’s LGBTQ+ community, appearing in all episodes of the series. In the final episode, primary character David (Tim Draxl) mourns his boyfriend Gabe (Oscar Leal) on the stage at PATCHS. He recalls Gabe’s love for the venue, describing its patrons as ‘his family’ and reflecting on the queerness of the venue itself:

If you looked from above at the dancefloor of PATCHS, it wasn’t just two straight lines of two by two but spirals of people weaving together like the veins in your body pumping blood to one giant beating heart, everything connected. (In Our Blood)

Here the queer venue is both a central element of the queer storyworld and quite literally the heart of queer community in Sydney’s Oxford Street. Of course, there are many other queer storyworlds that are constructed within the homes of LGBTQ+ characters. What makes queer storyworlds unique is that the domestic setting is rarely framed in straightforwardly homonormative terms. That is, the domestic realm is not depicted solely as sites for monogamous couples, long-term relationships, private procreative ‘vanilla’ sex, biological family, and child rearing. Instead, domestic spaces are recreated as sites of pleasure, eroticism, sexual exploration, chosen family and kinship, community and activism. For instance, Queer as Folk (UK) depicts queer homes as sites of sex, eroticism and while simultaneously creating spaces of queer chosen family. In particular, the home of Vince’s mother, Hazel (Denise Black), becomes a refuge for the young Nathan who escapes the heteronormative oppression of his conservative suburban family. In other examples such as Tales of the City, Transparent (2014–2019), and It’s a Sin, homes are similarly framed as sites of community connexion, where chosen queer families grow and thrive.

Whether in cities, suburbs, streets, domestic spaces, or queer venues, queer community settings have a significant role in the construction of queer storyworlds. Quite literally reflecting the worlds of the characters, the settings traced here are sites where new characters question and explore identity, build friendships, kinships and relationships, and where already ‘out’ characters contribute to a vibrant queer social scene. In the queer storyworlds we have discussed, queer community spaces are also framed as locations with a sense of history. They are at the heart of the worldmaking practices of television because they ground queerness in a time and place, giving queerness and the LGBTQ community a home.

Authorship: The significance of ‘out’ LGBTQ+ creators

As we draw these threads of worldbuilding together to map the contours of the queer storyworld, we are struck by the many LGBTQ+ ensemble series that have ‘out’ queer creatives in key roles. For instance, Will & Grace is co-created by gay showrunner Max Mutchnick; Tales of the City is based on the novels of the gay author Armistead Maupin; The L Word co-created by the lesbian showrunner Ilene Chaiken; Queer as Folk (UK) by gay showrunner Russel T. Davies; Noah’s Arc by Black gay showrunner Patrik-Ian Polk; Outland is co-created by gay writer-producers Adam Richard and John Richards; and Transparent is created by Joey Soloway, a nonbinary television writer and executive (the list goes on). While there is scope to take this line of analysis further– for example, considering the role of an ‘out’ queer positionality in a writers’ room for a queer story in a broader narrative – we begin by recognising the role of ‘out’ queer creators as a common factor in the construction of queer storyworlds.

Authorship is, of course, also recognised as a significant factor within other queer screen movements and is connected to both authenticity and artistic merit. For example, when coining the term ‘New Queer Cinema’ critic Rich (1992) highlighted a growing movement of independent films created by ‘out’ queer directors such as Gregg Araki, Tom Kalin, and Laurie Lynd (who would later direct episodes of Queer as Folk US and Noah’s Arc). Later filmmakers grouped into this movement included Rose Troche, director of 1994′s Go Fish (who would later direct episodes of The L Word). Linking New Queer Cinema to television, Aaron (2009: 67) notes the significance of ‘out’ queer creators in series that address complex queer themes. Thus, for the purposes of our analyses, ‘out’ queer authorship is a key factor in the capacity for television series to engage in nuanced and challenging representations of queerness.

As Newman and Levine argue, within the contemporary context the televisual showrunner is regarded as ‘an auteur: an artist of unique vision whose experiences and personality are expressed through storytelling craft, and whose presence in cultural discourse functions to produce authority for the forms with which he is identified’ (Newman and Levine, 2012: 38). This idea of showrunner as author of a television text emerged in the US in the 1990s. The use of the term presents a showrunner – often a writer-producer – within the collaborative environment of television production, as an individual who sits at the centre of a project’s authorial vision (Blakey, 2017; Taylor and Batty, 2024). While showrunner as auteur can feel dismissive of the collaborative nature at all stages of television production, we also note that the prominence of ‘out’ queer showrunners often associated with the queer storyworld. If we view the showrunner, as Elizabeth Blakey suggests, ‘as a translator of cultural capital into economic capital’ (Blakey, 2017: 329), then we might say that the ‘out’ queer showrunners of the series we identify are translating queer cultural capital into economic capital.

As part of this, LGBTQ+ authorship also functions as a legitimating force for queer televisual representation. For instance, Martina Ladendorf notes of The L Word that ‘the executive producer Ilene Chaiken being an ‘out’ lesbian and some of the directors and actors coming from ‘New Queer Cinema” gave ‘the project high credibility in the lesbian community’ (Ladendorf, 2010: 272, our emphasis). Conversely, Transparent, which focussed on the trans matriarch of a dysfunctional Los Angeles family, faced an initial wave of criticism about ‘the lack of trans involvement in the creation of the show’ (Horak, 2017: 16). As a result, the series adopted a trans affirming hiring policy in the second season, which saw the inclusion of more trans performers and creatives (Villarejo, 2016). As Horak notes, ‘Soloway vowed to hire trans people at all levels’ (Horak, 2017: 16). One of these creators was trans screenwriter Our Lady J and as Soloway noted in an interview for Variety, ‘Having a trans woman in the writers’ room has really allowed us to tell the story more from her own place of subjectivity’ (Wagmeister, 2015). Though the series was partly legitimated by trans consultants and writers, ‘it was showrunner Joey Soloway’s coming out’ in the series fourth season ‘that radically shifted the show’s reputation as an authentic trans production’ (Macintosh, 2023: 81).

Across these examples, we recognise the influence of LGBTQ+ authorship in establishing complex queer storyworlds and opening up questions about authenticity. Authorship becomes significant in how the inclusion of oft-hidden queer community spaces, the narrative depth of story, and the engagement with the complex intersections of politics/sex are all made possible by having writer-producers from these communities leading the creative process. What is translated is the specificity, the complexity and the messiness of our stories, and we feel this is what makes the queer storyworld appealing to our community and to broader communities as well.

Conclusion

When we initially began using the term queer storyworlds, we found it to be a useful way of thinking about a trend in Australian scripted television representations of queerness, from once-off or limited stories, to the airing of Outland ‘the first Australian series to feature all characters as gay and lesbian’ (O’Meara and Monaghan, 2025). We viewed this as significant because it reflected the increasing centrality of queerness within Australia’s screen industry and our local screen culture. Throughout this article, we expand and extend our work on the queer storyworld to reflect on the queer worldbuilding capacity of television. Uniting queer theory and television studies perspectives, we consider how queer worlds, communities and futures have been imagined in the Anglophone televisual markets of the US, UK, Australia, and Canada since the 1990s. While we focus only on a small number of case studies including Cucumber, Faking It, In Our Blood, Outland, Queer as Folk (UK), Queer as Folk (US), Sort Of, The L Word, Transparent, and Will & Grace, we highlight how queer storyworlds reflect a shift in televisual storytelling about LGBTQ± people and communities that began in the 1990s and continues in more contemporary televisual production. Through our analysis, we demonstrate how queer storyworlds layer queerness through character, narrative, and community settings, which is often legitimated through the presence of an ‘out’ LGBTQ+ auteur, showrunner or writing team. These findings have significance for queer screen and media studies, particularly in how they offer a developed theorisation of the queer storyworld and the capacity of television as a tool for queer worldbuilding.

While this article explores queer worldbuilding in relation to character, narrative, setting and authorship, we hope further research will explore how queer storyworlds play with and subvert stereotypes, represent sex and sexual practices, depict intracommunity conflict, and centre the political. We see these as vital areas for interrogation in relation to both contemporary and historical queer representations. Our focus in this article has been Anglophone television, yet we hope that these findings establish a basis for future research that moves beyond the Anglosphere. In particular, we see a great need to explore the politics of LGBTQ+ representation within global television through analyses that are attentive to issues of historical and cultural specificity. Additionally, transnational and transcultural studies could focus on the complexities of production, distribution, and reception of queer storyworlds.

In the process of writing this article, many more queer storyworlds have come to our attention across televisual genres, formats, and distribution contexts including 2025 series Invisible Boys in Australia, US comedy Mid-Century Modern, UK teen drama What it Feels Like for a Girl and Canadian romantic comedy Settle Down. The continued proliferation of queer storyworlds on the small screen, amid the profound transformations shaping television itself and shifting political climate towards LGBTQ+ communities and issues, calls for sustained critical attention to the relationship between televisual form and queer worldbuilding. Through attending to these developments, we can better understand how queer television not only reflects but actively reimagines queer belonging, communities, and futures.