Banana (TV series)

Did You Know?

• The series premiered on Logo in the United States on 13 April 2015 to 24,000 viewers.
• The series airs on SBS Two in Australia.
• The series is available on TVNZ OnDemand in New Zealand and on Hulu in the United States.

Production

Banana was ordered in 2013 as a companion series to Russell T Davies' long-gestating project Cucumber, with the online documentary series Tofu completing the trio. The three shows borrow their names from a medical scale measuring erection firmness, which progresses through tofu, peeled banana, banana, and cucumber. While Cucumber tells the story of middle-aged gay men, Banana shifts its focus to LGBT young people in Manchester who exist on the edges of the Cucumber storyline. The two series connect mainly through the character Dean Monroe, played by Fisayo Akinade, who has a major role in both. Akinade’s character is more open and self-assured about his sexuality, in contrast to the Cucumber characters, who are older activists who had to keep their sexuality more hidden. Unlike Davies’ earlier series Queer as Folk, which centered on gay men in the Canal Street club scene, Banana is an anthology that explores a range of young characters across the LGBT spectrum. The show made television history by casting the first transgender actor in a transgender role in a UK series: comedian Bethany Black played Helen, a trans woman. Davies insisted on hiring a trans actor for the part, even rewriting the script at the last minute to make it happen. Black praised this choice, criticizing the casting of Jared Leto as a trans woman in Dallas Buyers Club as a cisgender man trying to imagine what a trans woman would be like, and comparing cis actors playing trans roles to blackface performances in shows like It Ain't Half Hot Mum. Helen’s episode also includes Cleo Wilkinson, a Cucumber character played by Julie Hesmondhalgh, in a moment meant to represent a passing of the torch from Hesmondhalgh—who played trans woman Hayley Cropper on Coronation Street from 1998 to 2014—to Black and the broader trans community. Filming ran from June to September 2014.