Great work, Melanie. I find the comments from writers Lipman and Cowman particularly intriguing, especially considering that they went on to develop the US version of Queer As Folk for Showtime. I wonder if the multiple HIV related storylines in the QAF series were intended to offer a sort of amendment or corrective to An Early Frost's moralist point of view.

Melanie - I really enjoyed your piece, especially the interview with the writers. I actually saw this film when it first aired on TV and remembered it years later. I had a chance to rewatch it recently and was struck by some of the points you make about how striking the film's discussions of sex/sexuality are for its time. I think its easy to dismiss the film as a "disease of the week" film or as another example of the trouble gayness causes for straight people, but on my recent viewing I was struck by the end. Unlike so many of the later mainstream AIDS film, like Philadelphia, Michael doesn't die at the end. In fact, he doesn't even stay with his biological family, but returns home with Peter.

Melanie -- thanks so much for this really insightful post! It's fascinating to trace how TV in the 1980s engaged with the AIDS crisis and, as you put so elegantly, worked simultaneously to toe a thin line, one between respecting gay "lifestyles" but also quite vehemently disarticulating gay identity from any notion of pleasurable sexuality and/or sexual practice. Films like AN EARLY FROST strike me as prophetic in anticipating texts like Randy Shilts' AND THE BAND PLAYED ON, particularly in their pathologizing, whether tacit or explicit, of any sexual activity that took place outside the bounds of a monogamous relationship. As that telling quotation you cite concludes, queer folks like Michael and Peter are supposed symbols of gay pride precisely because they represent a healthy, hermetically sealed alternative to the quick, bathhouse cavorting that was blamed for so much of HIV/AIDS' spread. Also interesting then to think of this film in conjunction with the work of someone like Douglas Crimp or Tim Dean, both of whom defamiliarize typical notions of health in relation to HIV/AIDS and argue in different ways that promiscuity simultaneously saved a lot of gay men in the 80s through the transference of safer sex knowledge/practices.

Thanks for a great post to kick off the week. I really enjoyed the clip you selected to accompany your essay, as I had forgotten some of the details of this scene. The conclusion of the segment, where coming out of the closet and moving away from gay shame is represented as imperative to combatting AIDS, is fascinating. For all of the critiques we have of the "coming out" narrative, it's easy to forget how critical this act was to fighting institutions that were slow to respond to the emergence of AIDS. It reminds me of Robyn Wiegman's discussion of same-sex marriage, where she details the ways in which the AIDS crisis and the active marginalization of partners from hospital rooms, influenced present-day politics. Your argument that this text might be more complicated than it is often given credit for is intriguing and really has me thinking. Thanks!

Melanie, Thanks for introducing me to a film I have never seen. I wonder if you have seen HBO's The Normal Heart, and how you might consider "An Early Frost" in light of that film's continued preoccupation with promiscuity, gay identity, and culpability. To what extent does monogamy--as an unquestioned ideal of relationships--continue to shape the narrative in media focused on gay sexuality?