Forty years ago there was Golden Girls, and 15 years ago Men of a Certain Age, with Scott Bakula and Ray Romano (I thought it was hilarious). We’ve had older women and older men, but before we get to a future show about obsolete sentient robots we now have one about old homosexuals, Mid-Century Modern. Written and produced by the half-gay, half-straight team of Max Mutchnik and David Kohut that created Will and Grace, it’s a show overloaded with TV and Broadway star power—Linda Lavin, Nathan Lane, Matt Bomer—about three gay friends relocating from Atlanta and New York after a fourth friend dies, to live together in Palm Springs with the wealthiest of the trio, Bunny Schneiderman (Nathan Lane), the heir to a major bra manufacturing business. Bunny has also taken in his mother, played by the late Linda Lavin, in her final TV role. (Her character dies in the penultimate episode.)
Lane is loosely the Bea Arthur character (coincidentally, Arthur’s Jewish family owned a women’s clothing store), though Lavin also channels a little Arthur while in the Estelle Getty role. Lavin’s reprised her Jewish mother character many times in sitcoms, like the all-goy Allison Janney/Anna Farris Mom.
Airline steward Jerry Frank (Bomer) is the Goldie Hawn ditzy blond (though he’s a brunette), whose superior pulchritude and inferior intellect is the butt of constant jokes. When the three men come down with Covid and Momma Schneiderman decamps to a luxury hotel, Bunny says Jerry looks even better when he’s sick, and Jerry disagrees: “No! My cheeks are flushed, I’ve lost two pounds, and this bed head makes my hair look too thick!”
Last, Nathan Lee Graham plays Arthur Broussard, the Rue McLanahan role, not so much a femme fatale free with her charms (Bomer gets that territory) but as a sassy black fashionista recently let go at Vogue.
When Bunny’s sister Mindy (Louis CK protege Pamela Adlon) comes to visit, she comments on how the fridge has every version of “nut milk”—oat, almond and soy—and says she knows it can’t belong to her chunky brother Bunny.
Mindy: “The only nut milk you drink is from a…”
Bunny: “Please! Our mother is in the room!”
Lots of episodes have a famous guest star: Rhea Perlman as Lavin’s best friend, Murphy (American Horror) trouper Billie Lourde as Bomer’s 24-year-old daughter from a brief marriage when he was a closeted Mormon, Judd Hirsch as Lavin’s brother-in-law, Cheri Oteri as a dypso/nymphomaniac stewardess, and Jesse Tyler Ferguson as an imperious haute couture dress shop manager.
It's a polished but formulaic sitcom, exploring the question Bunny asks: “Wasn’t life better when gay men were shunned by their families?” And teasing the gay audience with lines (from Adlon) like: “What’s with the tennis outfits? Did a Williams sister just come out?” A lot of the jokes are the kind of cattiness I think you could overhear at a West Hollywood happy hour.
In one episode, Bomer decides to get to know the neighbors and invite them over for drinks, one of whom is a young, attractive, “ultraconservative” Congresswoman, who sponsors “anti-gay” legislation. But the Congresswoman (Stephanie Koenig) is a fraud, personally libertine, seducing Bunny with cell phone dick pics of her Congressional colleagues, Broussard with her tiny dog Reagan, and Jerry with drinking and dancing. She eventually takes an inebriated Jerry to bed where she “pegs” him and videos it with her cell phone.
Maybe the next season of Mid-Century Modern can rise above the sitcom formula completely (maybe they can rope Mike White in if he has a White Lotus hiatus). For people who want to watch a comedy with a lot of gay characters interacting there aren’t many American alternatives. Will and Grace alum Brian Taylor Alvarez (Jack’s petite Latin lover from the final season) writes and stars in English Teacher, an FX show that’s returning for a second season, but every episode follows a gay station of the Cross and covers a “gay issue” (radical queer kids, conservative school parents, straight girl best friends). The best and most creative “gay” show of the past year, Netflix’s Dead Boy Detectives, featured two ghosts, one gay, one straight, who run a supernatural detective agency (along with their third partner, a psychic who’s still living). It was cancelled.