Queer as Folk in America.

Advance word on Showtime's version of the phenomenal U.K. series finds it looking as queer as ever, in front of and behind the camera--even if it will have to earn an R rating

The lads won't be "shagging" when the all-new, Americanized version of the daring British TV show Queer as Folk hits Showtime in December--at least, that's not what they will be calling it. But the Yanks-only Queer as Folk "will be every bit as bold and frank and real" as its English prototype, insists Mark Zakarin, Showtime's executive vice president of original programming.

That's a tall order, but an early glimpse of what the cable network is cooking up on the Toronto set suggests that Showtime is determined to do what it takes to attract Queer fans. "We think Queer as Folk can connect to gay audiences the way no other show on TV does," says a hopeful Zakarin. The goal: Sign up a lot of new gay subscribers and reinforce the loyalty of viewers previously won over by the gay content of Showtime original productions such as More Tales of the City (1988), Common Ground (2000), and the ongoing series Beggars and Choosers.

The network's commitment is substantial, and it has recruited a cadre of gay talent to see it through. Committing up front to 22 one-hour episodes, Showtime turned to producer-writers Ron Cowen and Daniel Lipman--longtime partners both on-screen and off who wrote the 1985 AIDS-themed TV movie An Early Frost--to oversee the transition from U.K. sensation to U.S. original. And a prestigious team of gay talent, including co-executive producer Richard Kramer (Tales of the City) and producer-writers Jonathan Tolins (Twilight of the Golds) and Jason Schafer (Trick), is working on individual episodes. Even two of the lead actors are openly gay: 23-year-old Randy Harrison, who's cast as Justin, and Peter Paige, who plays flamboyant friend Emmett. "He's the most out there and most comfortable of this little band of brothers, the gayest of the gay," says Paige of his character, a transplanted Southerner who manages a clothing store. "He's certainly kind of effeminate, but he's lacking in any self-loathing--and in this day and age, that's kind of revolutionary.

"This [show] is politically dangerous," he continues. "The characters are real. Not everyone wants to know about them--but I defy people to say they don't know gay people just like them."

Cowen and Lipman have promised the original show's gay creator, Russell T. Davies, that they'll be faithful to the British template for the first few episodes, before they develop the new story lines needed to sustain the longer run. (The British Queer as Folk played out over only eight half-hour episodes, plus a two-part, two-hour sequel.) The chief alterations early on are cosmetic: The magnetic gay lothario, called Smart in the U.K. series, is now named Brian (Gale Harold), while Vince, his unlucky-in-love best mate, has been redubbed Michael (Talk Soup alum Hal Sparks).

As for Justin, based on the U.K. version's 15-year-old Nathan, he'll be 17 in America. "We were told the age of consent in England is 16 and Nathan was a year younger, so we decided to parallel that by making Justin 17, since the age of consent here is 18," explains Cowen. (In fact, the age of consent for gay sex is 18 in the United Kingdom; it's 16 for straight sex.) "But it's the same situation: He's a senior in high school who's just coming into the gay world and learning its codes. It's not an after-school special about some conflicted kid. Justin knows what he wants and goes after it."

While the show is being filmed in Toronto, the producers elected to set their tales of the city in Pittsburgh, centered on its fortuitously named gay strip, Liberty Avenue. It's a carefully chosen U.S. parallel to the working-class city of Manchester, England, and the Canal Street locale of the U.K. series. "We felt it was too easy to set a story about gay characters in West Hollywood, the Castro, or Chelsea," explains Lipman. "We felt it was very important that it take place in a typical middle-American city like Pittsburgh. We want it to be more about the people who live right next door."

Showtime faces one hurdle the original series did not: winning an R rating from the Motion Picture Association of America, since the network is contractually obligated to cable systems to go no further than an R. "We've told the producers not to censor themselves," says Zakarin. "We can run a hard R."

The promise of sexual adventurousness is underlined by Showtime's guerrilla marketing campaign, begun at the Millennium March on Washington in April and continuing at gay events throughout the summer. The company has handed out hundreds of thousands of promotional cardboard fans bearing teasing come-ons like HUNG, UNCUT, and CURIOUS. "They're icons for the show," says Len Fogge, Showtime's executive vice president of creative and marketing, who reports the fans have already shown up as collectibles on eBay.

For more than a year, another hot item on Internet auction sites was any U.S.-compatible pirated videotape of the original U.K. series. The reason? Despite ever-increasing demand fed by the U.S. gay press and the show's appearances on the queer film festival circuit, every major television outlet declined to buy the American broadcast rights to the original Queer as Folk--including Showtime.

"It wasn't because of the sex," insists Nicola Shindler, Queer as Folk's Manchester-based producer. "It was more about the accents. American audiences may be comfortable with British costume dramas, but contemporary dramas don't sell."

But the U.K. series is currently airing in many American cities. C1TV, a fledgling gay-inclusive cable TV network that airs one night a week on leased-access channels on 25 cable systems, bought the U.S. broadcast and video rights and is airing the original Queer as Folk in 30-minute installments through October 22. The downside is that C1TV has eliminated much of the nudity, bleeped some of the profanity, and fudged Nathan's age.

"Every time Nathan says his age we've scrambled it, but it's obvious to viewers he's not 18," says C1TV CEO David Sine. "We might have been able to get away with more in New York or L.A., but in editing it for U.S. TV standards, we had to go with our most conservative bet. Our goal was to get the show on the air, not to fight with cable operators." Meanwhile, C1TV is selling the unexpurgated version of the series on VHS and DVD via its Web site.

As for Davies, who created the whole Queer phenomenon in the first place, he left the future of comrades-in-arms Stuart and Vince up in the air in the slightly surreal conclusion of the two-part sequel that aired in the United Kingdom earlier this year. And since the original funder, the United Kingdom's Channel Four, turned down Davies's proposal for a spin-off series about Vince's irrepressible mom, Hazel, he's moved on to other projects: a love story about a gay man who falls for a straight woman and another project called The Second Coming, which is literally about the Second Coming. Will he ever return to the further adventures of Smart and Vince? Says Shindler: "Maybe in 30 years he'll bring them back to see where they are then." In the meantime, we'll all get ready for the all-new adventures of Michael and Brian.

For the Advocate's past coverage of Queer as Folk and other Showtime original programming and for links to Queer as Folk Web sites, go to www.advocate.com