Peacock’s Queer as Folk reimagining will not return for any more episodes after its first season on the streamer.
Creator Stephen Dunn took to social media Friday night to announce the news that the series would not continue.
“It’s a rare gift in these times, and in this country, to be able to make a show as fearless and unapologetic as ‘Queer as Folk,’” Dunn wrote on Instagram. “This experience changed our lives forever and we’re so grateful to have found this incredible new family. But today we received the disappointing news that we’re not getting a second season.”
He continued, “We know how much it’s meant to the fans and while we’re heartbroken we won’t get to make more episodes, we wanna thank everyone for watching and falling in love with Brodie, Mingus, Ruthie, Noah, Shar, Julian, Daddius, Bussey, Marvin, Judy and Brenda. We’re so grateful for the chance to honor our community and are so proud of this show. #QueerAsFamily✨.”
The Peacock series was the third installment of what has become the Queer as Folk franchise. Russell T Davies created the original British series that ran for two seasons in the early 1990s and marked a rare drama that focused exclusively on a group of LGBTQ+ friends. The series, inspired by Davies’ own friend group, was remade in the late 1990s by Ron Cowan and Daniel Lipman for Showtime and brought the same groundbreaking LGBTQ+ stories to U.S. television. The series ran for multiple seasons and helped pave the way for more inclusive programming featuring queer characters across the spectrum and with shows like Transparent and Pose.
Dunn, who grew up watching the Showtime version in secret like many other members of the LGBTQ+ community, approached Davies for rights to the series with a pitch to modernize the series for today’s generation. Davies, who had declined such offers for years, signed on immediately as an exec producer. The show sold in a bidding war to Bravo and ultimately landed on Peacock as part of NBCU’s streaming push.
Peacock’s reimagining followed a group of friends in New Orleans and used a Pulse-like nightclub shooting at a gay bar as a way of exploring how the city’s LGBTQ+ community rebuilds itself. Dunn worked with several Pulse survivors when crafting Queer as Folk, a number of whom also served as consultants on the series.
Ahead of the show’s premiere, Dunn previously told The Hollywood Reporter that he wasn’t trying to redo the previous stories that have already been done as well as they were, which is why they didn’t want to use the word “reboot.”
“If you squint, you can see the character archetypes that exist that are a slight reference [to the original] but I’m not heading toward the same trajectory as any of the other versions of the show before,” Dunn said.
Peacock’s Queer as Folk starred Devin Way, Fin Argus, Jesse James Keitel, CG, Johnny Sibilly and Ryan O’Connell, with guest stars include Kim Cattrall and Juliette Lewis.
