From BBC, no less
A groundbreaking US sitcom, imported to the UK by C4 in a limited number of episodes, which dealt in a real way with homosexuality, a million miles from John Inman's mincing TV personas in Britain. Dealing as it did with such areas as Aids, gay-bashing and male kissing, Brothers was way too hot a topic for the major US networks to handle - ABC and NBC turned it down flat - so the series went out in the States on the Showtime cable channel, fast becoming one of the prime places to see material that stepped out of the mainstream. Indeed, Brothers was the first sitcom made specifically for cable.
Set in New York [BBC is mistaken here -- it was set in Philly] (although filmed in Hollywood), the series focused on the three Waters brothers - Lou (eldest), Joe (middle) and Cliff (youngest). Lou is a construction worker and something of a father figure to his siblings; Joe (played by Robert Walden, the likeable but pushy newspaper reporter Paul Rossi in Lou Grant) is a former professional (American) football hero who has retired and opened his own restaurant; and Cliff...Cliff is gay. This was revealed in dramatic fashion in the series' opening episode, when he 'came out' on the eve of his planned wedding.
Because Cliff looks and acts 'straight' this makes the news particularly hard for his brothers to accept. Indeed, this inability of Lou and Joe to come to terms with the fact that their baby brother was not one of them, but, rather, 'one of them', formed the basis for much of the comedy. (And yes, apart from the 'issues' the series was also funny.) Acceptance was an especially tough proposition for Lou, the very macho, very hetero ex-sportsman, and he also had trouble coming to terms with Cliff's visiting effeminate friend Donald.
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