In 2000, Showtime premiered Queer as Folk, followed by The L Word in 2004. Neither show was perfect—both centered on affluent, white, and thin characters—but they were both revolutionary for their time. In the early aughts, LGBTQ+ representation on television was still rare, and Queer as Folk and The L Word in particular centered queer characters while allowing them to embody a full range of human emotions and experiences, rather than be relegated to just a tragic side character or quirky best friend.

These dramas gave the community a shared point of connection, worked to change perceptions around queerness, and gave viewers an opportunity to see queer characters who were both complex and thriving. For many, these shows were a singular, vital way to feel seen and loved. After all, Queer as Folk premiered two years after ABC canceled Ellen DeGeneres’s sitcom following protests over her coming out, and The L Word aired a year before the heartbreaking romance Brokeback Mountain debuted amid widespread controversy and backlash.

Today’s media landscape seems to be improving: GLAAD reported in their annual “Where Are We on TV” study that we’re seeing a wider array of shows that delve into the nuances of identity and explore how there’s no singular experience or “right” way to be queer. Beloved shows like Pose, Feel Good, Dickinson, It’s a Sin, Euphoria, Hacks, and One Mississippi have all featured queer main characters grappling with real-life issues, such as substance abuse, career hurdles, and familial tragedy.

Elsewhere, we’re seeing an increasing number of three-dimensional characters in ensemble series, from the romantic foibles of Eric (Ncuti Gatwa) on teen comedy Sex Education to Elliot Page’s character coming out as a trans man on The Umbrella Academy, as well as wizards Moiraine (Rosamund Pike) and Siuan (Sophie Okonedo) falling in love on fantasy series Wheel of Time.

With an increasing amount of young people openly identifying as queer, the media we consume will only continue to reflect this reality. From a lesbian period piece to swashbuckling gay pirates, check out these currently streaming shows—with some that don’t necessarily center on a queer lead—that celebrate LGBTQ+ stories, making them just as vibrant and vital as ever.

1. The L Word: Generation Q

Given how formative the original was, it’s no surprise that Showtime rebooted The L Word for a younger audience. Boasting a more diverse writers room this time around, Generation Q seems aware of the shortcomings of the original, reflecting the true diversity of Los Angeles. The reboot still follows characters Bette (Jennifer Beals), Shane (Katherine Moennig), and Alice (Leisha Hailey), but it also introduces a number of newer and more youthful characters, whose storylines overlap and unfold in unique ways.

The more conscious focus on diversity is most reflected in its racial and trans representation. Though the 2004 version featured television’s first trans man series regular with Max Sweeney (Daniela Sea), he was portrayed as a cautionary tale about transitioning. In contrast, Generation Q features Leo Sheng’s Micah Lee, a gentle educator whose identity as a trans man evolves over the course of two seasons. He eventually goes from crushing on the neighborhood male hotties to falling for his friend Mirabel (Jillian Mercado), an Afro-Latinx attorney who has muscular dystrophy. Similarly, the series delves deeper into characters of color than its predecessor, focusing on a central romance between Dani (Arienne Mandi) and Sophie (Rosanny Zayas), two Latinx women who come from very different backgrounds and clash as a result.

These changes make the reboot feel more culturally and socially aware, while still being as sexy and soapy as ever. It’s still not immune to critique—issues around fatphobia, for example, persist—but what’s great is that now the L Word no longer has to carry the burden of being the only show on air about queer identity, and can just be leisurely enjoyed like a beachy summer read.

Watch Now

2. Yellowjackets

If Yellowjackets premiered 10 years ago, the four main leads—Shauna, Taissa, Natalie, and Misty—likely would have all been just white and straight. But, thankfully, that isn’t the case, as the series wouldn’t be the same without Taissa, played in two separate timelines by Tawny Cypress and Jasmin Savoy Brown. The series, which premiered in 2021, follows a high school girls soccer team whose plane mysteriously crashes in the woods, forcing them all into increasingly Lord of the Flies-esque scenarios that eventually lead to cultism, cannibalism, and possibly witchcraft. While Taissa’s story isn’t about her identifying as a lesbian, it’s certainly an integral part of who she is, and her sexuality plays into both her teen and adult storylines, where she fends off creatures both real and (possibly) supernatural as they target her girlfriend, and later, her wife and child.

Yellowjackets may be the definition of “I support women’s wrongs,” and Taissa may very well be the most clever and ruthless of all the women. But in the wake of teen soccer film Bend It Like Beckham being dubbed “the gayest love story never told,” it’s refreshing that a show finally acknowledges that yes, there are queer women who play and love soccer, as Megan Rapinoe can attest.

Watch Now

3. Our Flag Means Death

David Jenkins’ Our Flag Means Death is an unabashedly queer romp on the high seas. Loosely based on the life of Stede Bonnet’s “The Gentleman Pirate,” the series takes liberties with history and portrays a romance between Stede (Rhys Darby) and the notorious pirate Blackbeard (Taika Waititi). Full of dark humor and pathos, the story follows the genteel Stede as he learns to be a little more ruthless and attempts to teach Blackbeard to be a little less so.

It’s a fresh take on an often very stereotypically masculine and straight genre, and it’s incredible to see how the series portrays Stede having a nearly all queer crew, including Lucius (Nathan Foad), Black Pete (Matthew Maher), Oluwande (Samson Kayo), and Jim, who’s played by nonbinary actor Vico Ortiz and teaches the crew to use they/them pronouns. This is in stark comparison to shows in the early aughts, which were often criticized for teasing audiences with possible romantic relationships between same-sex leads, only to pull back last minute—a term called “queer-baiting.” In a Verge interview, Jenkins admitted that he had no idea how prevalent queer-baiting was, and he found it “heartbreaking” how many fans were “afraid to let themselves believe that” the show really was leading up to a Stede and Blackbeard romance. Our Flag Means Death feels revolutionary in how effortlessly it portrays all these queer characters living, singing, and pillaging together.

Watch Now

4. Gentleman Jack

For lovers of period pieces who wish the Georgian era had more women kissing, Gentleman Jack is for you. This series is notable for the sheer fact that it tells the true story of 1800s lesbian industrialist and landowner Anne Lister, who chronicled her travels, studies, and “love for the fairer sex” in over 24 volumes of diaries. Gentleman Jack is a lush queer romance done in the style of Emma or Pride and Prejudice—something we’ve never seen before beyond films like The Favourite and Portrait of a Lady on Fire.

The series also pushes us to question how much of history has been “straight-washed.” After all, Anne wore masculine clothes, but her status as a member of the upper class allowed her to get away with being dubbed an eccentric. She married a woman, but there weren’t any courts that recognized it as legal. She even wrote extensively in her diaries about her sexual dalliances with women, but it was all done in coded “crypt hand” that modern day historians are still unravelling today. Not only is the show a reminder that queer people existed at all points in history, it reminds viewers that queer history simply is our shared history.

Watch Now

5. Sort Of

Sometimes a show doesn’t need to be anything more than a quiet and contained rumination about life and the choices that define us. Such is the way with the drama Sort Of, which was co-created by and stars Bilal Baig, who’s notable for being the first queer South Asian Muslim actor to lead a Canadian primetime series. Baig plays Sabi, a gender-fluid Pakistani Muslim nanny, who’s a little too nice for their own good and is torn between a big, life-changing move or staying put to care for a family. As Baig explained to Xtra Magazine, the show is less about a traditional coming out narrative than it is about “somebody who’s on the quieter side of life,” who exudes a calm “energy and aura.” The result is a pretty soothing and tender dramedy that feels similar to Fleabag and also doesn’t shy away from the cultural clashes that Sabi faces as a non-binary brown person. The series also boasts several queer leads, including Sabi’s best friend 7ven (Amanda Cordner), and their employer, Bessy (Grace Lynn Kung).

Sort Of’s gentle and straightforward humor has clearly resonated with viewers. Baig told Fashion Magazine that in the wake of season 1, their DMs have been full of “love and gratitude” from viewers who felt seen by Sabi. “Their parents have started to use their pronouns correctly,” they said. “They feel more certain than ever that they will transition or come out to their family. It’s like this spirit of opening.” Sort Of was renewed for season 2 in February.

Watch Now

6. Heartstopper

You can’t get much softer than Heartstopper, a dreamy coming-of-age rom-com based on a slice-of-life web comic by Alice Oseman. Compared to Love, Simon, which centered on the trauma of coming out, Oseman explained to Buzzfeed that she “really likes taking characters through queer discovery in a joyful way.” The story follows Charlie (Joe Locke), an awkward schoolboy who falls in love with Nick (Kit Connor), the good-natured jock he sits beside. The series also expands the comic’s story to include Charlie’s almost entirely queer group of friends, which notably includes the slow romance between Tao (William Gao) and Elle (Yasmin Finney), a trans girl who transfers to a nearby girls school and forms her own group of queer friends there.

While the series doesn’t avoid acknowledging teenage homophobia and bullying, these issues are often smoothed over with the giddiness of having a teen crush. Heartstopper feels radical in how it doesn’t dwell on feelings of shame, and instead centers itself around the joy of a young queer person being able to live their full and authentic self. This portrayal has clearly resonated with viewers: It nabbed a rare 100% critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes, along with an early season 2 renewal following its April 2022 debut.

Watch Now

7. First Kill

Romeo and Juliet meets Twilight in Netflix’s queer lesbian romance First Kill. Based on a short story by V.E. Schwab, First Kill centers on Juliette and Calliope, star-crossed lovers from rival families. The two young teens meet under rather fraught circumstances: Vampire Juliette has picked Calliope as her first victim, not knowing that she comes from a long line of incredibly proficient monster hunters.

The vampire subgenre has long equated vampirism with queerness—most notably with the 1872 erotic novella Carmilla—yet queer representation in vampire shows and films has been few and far between on series like Vampire Diaries and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. While it debuted to middling reviews, First Kill is the only series currently airing that fully centers a lesbian vampire romance. As pure YA drama fodder that’s full of teenage lust, actual blood-lust, and fanfiction tropes that may cause you to roll your eyes, don’t expect First Kill to be any sort of deep exploration of identity. But even young queer supernatural fans need their guilty pleasures, don’t they?

Watch Now

8. Star Trek: Discovery

The Star Trek franchise has always been at the forefront of progress, from featuring the first interracial kiss on television to having an ethnically diverse crew. Today, that diversity extends to featuring numerous queer characters among the crewmembers on series like Picard, Lower Decks, and Strange New Worlds. And it’s Star Trek: Discovery that’s particularly notable, as it portrays in-depth a gay married couple on deck, a first for the franchise. When the series first unveiled the relationship between medical officer Culber (Wilson Cruz) and science officer Stamets (Anthony Rapp) in episode three, George Takei thanked the series for “going where no Star Trek show has gone before.” In some seasons, their love quite literally transcends time and space. Later seasons include lesbian engineer Jett (Tig Notaro), non-binary character Adira (Blu del Barrio), and Adira’s trans boyfriend Gray (Ian Alexander), whose symbiotic relationship with Adira is an integral aspect of season 3.

Though science fiction is literally centered around futuristic ideas, most television shows and films in this genre have been pretty retrograde in their complete lack of queer characters. So, it’s always heartening to see a major franchise continue to lead the charge when it comes to queer representation.

Watch Now

9. Severance

On the tin, you’d never expect Severance to have a queer romance among its many winding storylines. The sci-fi drama follows four people who elect to undergo a controversial procedure that severs their outside self from their workplace self. Think shades of Westworld meets Lost. Amid all of this is an achingly intimate love story between Irving (John Turturro) and Burt (Christopher Walken). Despite being from two separate departments, they end up falling in love and carrying on a courtship in secret. It’s surprisingly tender—a term I never thought I’d use for a Walken character—and it’s heartwarming to see two older characters explore a same-sex romance without the show feeling like it needs to over-explain or label their obvious soulmate connection. The season cliffhanger between them also leaves plenty to explore in season 2, which was announced in April.

Watch Now

10. Rebelde

American viewers might be unaware of how beloved the Mexican telenovela Rebelde was within the Latinx community in the early aughts. The original series centered around a band formed at a super-elite boarding school, and like the now-iconic Spice World movie, featured a real and popular musical group playing the characters. Grunge girl character Roberta (Dulce María) was dubbed by many as their moment of “gay awakening,” but none of the lead characters actually had any gay romances. That crucial shortcoming has been fixed in Netflix’s reboot of the series, which has some callbacks to the original but mostly focuses on a new group of students at Elite Way School.

Just like the other teen-centric shows on this list, the series is celebrated for having several queer characters in the cast. There’s Andi (Lizeth Selene), who falls for Emilia (Giovanna Grigio), and together they explore their attraction to women for the first time. There’s also Luka (Franco Masini), the band’s gay musician who berates classmates who throw around slurs. The show can certainly be a bit campy and is very YA-focused, but for those missing the musical drama of Glee and who’ve already finished the similarly queer-centric Spanish drama Elite, Rebelde is worth a watch. As Mercedes Viera wrote for Refinery29, “I’m sure Andi is already someone’s gay awakening, just like Roberta was ours.”

Watch Now

11. We Are Lady Parts

While Nida Manzoor’s British sitcom We Are Lady Parts largely focuses on straight character Amina (Anjana Vasan), the series is boundary-breaking in how it centers a punk rock band made entirely up of Muslim women. Among the members is drummer Ayesha (Juliette Motamed), who has an awakening mid-season when she’s struck with love at first sight for a woman: influencer Zarina (Sofia Barclay). While Ayesha’s burgeoning queerness is not the focus of the season—which only consists of six short episodes—the series was renewed for a second season, leaving space for Ayesha’s identity to be explored further.

Regardless how of briefly the show depicts Ayesha’s crush, We Are Lady Parts is one of the few (and possibly the only) current depictions of a queer Muslim woman on television. It’s a refreshing reminder that years after the original The L Word, television is slowly exploring the intersections of what it means to be a queer person of color who’s moving against the grain in their own culture.

Watch Now

12. Dafne and the Rest

Who doesn’t enjoy a rom-com about the humor and tragedy of online dating? Created by and starring Abril Zamora, the HBO drama Dafne and the Rest follows Dafne, a trans woman whose love life hits rock bottom when she’s dumped by her boyfriend after he admits that he’s fallen out of love with her. It’s a heartbreaking start, but Dafne then goes on a journey of self-discovery, all while figuring out if she has maybe fallen for her good friend and roommate of many years.

As Zamora explained to GLAAD, she never wanted Dafne’s story to be solely about her identity as a trans woman, but rather wanted it to be a reflection of what it feels like to be a faltering 30-something whose life hasn’t gone to plan. Zamora also said that so many depictions of trans characters focus on just the transitioning phase, or issues around trauma or rejection. In contrast, she wants her projects to come from a more positive place, and explore a trans woman falling in love, going through ups and downs, and learning to fix her mistakes, just like everyone else. “I think the humanity encourages empathy in others,” Zamora said. “I wanted to talk about my life.”

Watch Now

13. Queer as Folk

Just like The L Word, Queer as Folk is making a comeback in the hopes of resonating with today’s audiences. Stephen Dunn and Jaclyn Moore’s new series kicks off with a shooting at a gay club in New Orleans, which is then used to explore how each character manages their trauma. Compared to the original, this rebooted version of Queer as Folk tells a much wider and more varied set of stories through characters like Brodie (Devin Way), his trans best friend Ruthie (Jesse James Keitel), and drag performer Mingus (Fin Argus). The series is not so much a reboot as it is “taking what’s behind [the original]—the idea of queer defiance and queer joy—and telling a story about that,” executive producer and writer Moore, who also identifies as trans, explained. She added that “queerness” has evolved since the late ‘90s, and she wanted Queer as Folk to be able to speak to a new generation.

This is most clear with the character of Ruthie, who Moore said felt like a mirror of herself in all her three-dimensional, complex glory. Ultimately, while the series never shies away from the tragedy and difficulties of being a trans person, the series also captures the triumphs. “It’s really hard to be a trans person [when] the world is constantly telling you why you’re not allowed to live,” she told Collider. But she added, “If there’s a young, pre-transition girl or boy out there who sees themselves in [Queer as Folk] and … sees that Ruthie is this unapologetic, beautiful, funny person who’s living a very full life … I hope it helps.”

Watch Now