That Certain Summer

Gay characters on tv?  Of course!  In 2024 we are seeing more gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender characters in main roles on television than ever before.  I especially like how characters have been portrayed on shows like Major Crimes, Tommy, Modern Family, Star Trek: Picard, 9-1-1: Lone Star, and Council of Dads.  It hasn't always been that way though.  Over the years, there have been gay characters, but usually they were made fun of and treated with all the stereotypes.

Way back in 1959, a gay tv drama South was broadcast on the ITV anthology Play of the Week.  I'm not certain, but I think it was the first. In 1961 San Francisco public tv station KQED presented the first documentary on homosexuality to be seen on American television, The Rejected.  The last I checked; you could watch in on YouTube.  When That Certain Summer aired on ABC Television in 1972, it was the first television screenplay to sensitively explore homosexuality through the story of an American family split by divorce.  Although just a tv movie with a single airing, That Certain Summer was groundbreaking. 

Hal Holbrook and Martin Sheen play the gay couple in That Certain Summer with Scott Jacoby as the 14-year-old son of Holbrook's character. The dad had divorced several years earlier, and the boy does not know that his father is gay and in a committed relationship with his new life partner.  No suggestions of physical intimacy back then.  It's just a simple love story.

Do you have any favorite LGBTQ+ characters from tv land?  Is there a show with a LGBTQ+ theme that you particularly like?  Television has really come a long way since That Certain Summer, but has it come far enough?  Is there proper LGBTQ+ representation?  What do YOU think?