Cucumber (British TV series)

Did You Know?

• Both Cucumber and Banana premiered in the United States on Logo on 13 April 2015 and were watched by 55,000 viewers.
• The series aired in Germany as a dubbed version on WDR on 30 July 2016, watched by 70,000 viewers.
• Cucumber was nominated for the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding TV Movie or Limited Series.

Production

Russell T Davies created Cucumber during his tenure as showrunner of Doctor Who. The series was initially conceived as a spiritual sequel to Queer as Folk under the working title More Gay Men, focusing on middle-aged gay men. The idea developed from a question posed by Davies' friend Carl Austin in 2001: "why are so many gay men glad when we split up?" Production was originally scheduled for 2006 but was delayed indefinitely by the success of the Doctor Who revival. By March 2007, Davies had fleshed out the initial episode. After moving to Los Angeles in 2008, Davies pursued the project along with an American adaptation of Bob & Rose. Showtime and BBC Worldwide picked up Cucumber, and pre-production began in July 2011, but was suspended a month later when Davies' boyfriend Andrew Smith was diagnosed with a brain tumour. The couple returned to Manchester for Smith's chemotherapy. Channel 4 later picked up the series, produced by Nicola Shindler and the Red Production Company. Former Doctor Who producer Piers Wenger convinced Davies to return to the channel due to the show's political nature, by which time the concept had expanded to include sister shows Banana and Tofu.

Reception

Writing in The Guardian, Sam Wollaston called the debut of the Cucumber/Banana/Tofu trilogy the "television event of the week" and noted that as a heterosexual viewer he never felt excluded. Mark Lawson observed that the series addressed a broader theme of "respectability meltdown" as the protagonist accelerates from smug dullness to social humiliation. Both Lawson and Theo Merz compared the trilogy to Davies' Queer as Folk, with Lawson arguing that while Cucumber and Banana are "notably sexually graphic", changing social attitudes make such depictions less likely to offend. Merz agreed that the shows feel less dangerous than Queer as Folk and noted that Cucumber has wider latitude to represent varied gay characters. Gerard O'Donovan, writing in the Telegraph, praised the first episode's comedy and energy, while Michael Hogan, after the third episode, expressed disappointment and found little warmth in the protagonist Henry. Ellen E. Jones in The Independent described the series as a tragi-comedy of middle-aged desperation that is both sad and very funny, and argued its appeal is universal rather than limited to a gay audience.