Some of the things that simply should happen do happen, such as Mary Ann and Anna locking tearful gazes across the party and then disappearing upstairs to get high. To which Mary Ann, one of literature’s great innocents, softly replies: “Those people are my family.” He declares he will never understand “those people”. She comes with a dodgy conventional husband in tow, a barely closeted homophobe who by the end of the first episode is daring her to go off “frolicking with the freaks”. Which is also too self-consciously hip and moneyed.
“I tried Googling what to wear to a 90-year-old’s birthday party in San Francisco and pictures of Cher kept coming up,” she wails, pitching up in a Next-level tea dress to the queer shindig of the century. It’s Anna’s 90th birthday party and Mary Ann Singleton (Laura Linney), the prodigal straight, anally retentive daughter, returns to San Francisco older, sadder, no wiser and just as square as ever. It’s 20 years on and we’re back at Barbary Lane, which according to the consumer law of sequels is considerably bigger (Escher levels of decking, stairs and, erm, fairy lights), more aspirational and less fabulous than the original. Our very own 28 Barbary Lane located in the spacious, open-aspected, radical mind of Maupin. After all, Tales of the City remains the first proper home of generations of LGBT+ people. Sometimes it’s doing its best a bit too hard, which I guess is to be expected when the stakes are this high and the original – both books and mini-series – this fiercely loved. We’re still people aren’t we? Flawed, narcissistic and doing our best.”Īs for Lauren Morelli’s respectful reimagining of Tales of the City, executive produced by Armistead Maupin and the result of an all-queer writers’ room, it’s … flawed, narcissistic and doing its best. “Hmmm,” replies the original house mother, straight to camera, in that fabulously bone-dry, bone-loving slooooow tone that only Olympia Dukakis – OLYMPIA DUKAKIS! – can pull off.
H ow much has San Francisco changed since the 60s? This is the question posed to Anna Madrigal – ANNA MADRIGAL! – in the opening frames of Netflix’s Tales of the City reboot.
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