TMC Investigates… Lip Service

So whatever happened to Lip Service: BBC3′s foray into the complex, too often cringe-worthy world of lesbian entanglement? Their promise of a British L Word seems to have drained away over time, much like my respect for Jenny Schechter did circa 2006/2007. (Seriously, she wasn’t THAT bad in season one!) According to their website Lip Service was set to hit our screens in Spring 2010. So what’s going on?

Has our dear old Beeb forgotten about us? Have they pulled the plug on what was set to be a monumental development for lesbian representation on British TV? Do they no longer care about my wish to see attractive ladies fumbling about with each other on screen?

Well thankfully the answer is no, they haven’t pulled the plug; and indeed they do care about my tele-visual needs, it’s true, I asked.* Rather it’s a question of scheduling. After a quick chat with the lovely press lady at BBC Scotland I was informed that the show has been pushed back to Autumn and would be hitting our screens around October or so. Apparently there isn’t any explicit reason for this; it’s just the nature of scheduling. But the show was shot around that time last year so that could have been a factor in the decision. I asked about the lack of information/ teasers/ sneak peaks on offer and was informed we should stay tuned as more will be coming our way very, very soon.

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So why does it even matter? Hasn’t the lesbian world enough real life drama already, do we really need it reflected on screen? Well pushing aside my excitement at the prospect of lesbians with Scottish accents, I would say most certainly yes we do, as Stonewall’s latest report shows. There are so few representations of LGBT characters on British TV – particularly lesbians – that I would seriously struggle to write a Tuesdays Top Ten. (Anyone fancy giving it a go?) So it’s incredibly infuriating when I see articles such as this; slamming the entire effort whilst giving no courtesy whatsoever to the fact that this is such a big step in the right direction for British TV. Obviously Lip Service won’t cover the entire spectrum of gay girl experience (no show could ever realistically do so) but having an entire show dedicated to and portraying lesbians is a huge step forward, away from the sort of archaic stereotypical token lez that’s thrown into a popular soap every now and then. Lets just hope others soon begin to follow.