In 2018, hopes were not high for Queer Eye. Having dredged the sea floor of early 00s nostalgia, Netflix announced that it had reimagined Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, a makeover series that churned out 100 episodes between 2003 and 2007. In it, switched-on gay men had told clueless straight men how to dress, act and behave. Fifteen years after it debuted, however, that concept felt like a relic. At best, it was a testament to an era in which queer representation on screen was still rare and mostly dealt in unthreatening stereotypes. Bringing it back sounded unpromising, like yet another dead-end television reboot.
When Queer Eye launched, however, it had undergone a makeover of its own, and confounded most expectations. It chopped the name in half, ditched the focus on straight men as its subjects – though, ever inclusive, they were very much part of it – and dragged itself into a more emotionally literate and sensitive era. The five men at its core did fashion and style, of course, but they were delicate about it. The idea was not to shame people for their bodies or personal taste – a common feature of early 00s makeover shows – but to give them a helping hand, lift them out of the doldrums and make them feel as if they and their lives had value and worth.
After eight years, numerous US cities and trips to Australia and Japan, Queer Eye is calling it quits with its forthcoming 10th season. Its demise feels inevitable, if perhaps a little later than might have been expected. It made household names of its new fab five, who have probably outgrown the confines of a makeover show. Before it came out, the hair expert, Jonathan Van Ness, was best known for a comedy Game of Thrones reaction series, but even the most online of viewers could be forgiven for not knowing who the rest of them were.
They covered emotions (Karamo Brown, who loves to chat in a car), fashion (Tan France, who loves to tuck), food (Antoni Porowski, who loves avocados almost as much as he loves The National T-shirts) and interiors (Bobby Berk, and latterly Jeremiah Brent, who replaced him). Scour the internet and you’ll find plenty of speculation about real-life friendships and fallings-out, followings and unfollowings, but that never really tainted it. The ordinary people were the point. The experts brought high-wattage enthusiasm, but softness and compassion were its driving forces.
Its best moments were pure comfort television. The first episode saw Tom Jackson, a Georgia man in his late 50s, reconciling with his ex-wife after a gentle glow-up in both appearance and mentality; he died in 2023, a firm favourite among viewers. In season three, the barbecuing Jones sisters from Kansas City, Mary and Deborah, became sauce entrepreneurs, and Mary had dental treatment, relieving a lifelong insecurity about her smile. There was the powerful Black Girl Magic episode, in which Jess, a young lesbian who had been rejected by her family after coming out, began to get to grips with her identity. More recently, in one of the most extraordinary episodes of all, 53-year-old Nicole had been left, suddenly, by her controlling husband of more than 30 years. The astonishing twists kept coming, but in the end, she got the 50th birthday party she had dreamed of, albeit a little late. It was beautiful.
If Queer Eye offered participants a sometimes temporary shot at a more comfortable life – an expensive haircut, nice clothes, good furniture, a form of counselling, a nutritious meal plan – then it offered that optimism to its viewers, too. Any given episode of Queer Eye pushed the message that decent people would reap rewards, that being good, hardworking and considerate might lead to a helping hand when you’re down on your luck, when it seems as if the world does not care for you any more. It could be hard to get through the hour without crying, and often, that was part of its appeal: press play for the near-guarantee of a cathartic sob at heartwarming deeds and kind people.
As a reboot, it far surpassed the original, but sadly it, too, is beginning to feel like a relic, for far more depressing reasons. As it cheered its way through the early 2020s, Queer Eye showed it had moved on from its predecessor. It embraced cultural shifts around identity, self-acceptance and, particularly, mental health. Now, its relentless sunniness feels at odds with the world in which it is operating. As it comes to an end, it is increasingly difficult not to view it as the fairytale fantasy of a value system that is slipping away. Still, for now, let’s take it as one last celebration, as one final escapist, feelgood hurrah.
• Queer Eye is on Netflix now.
