Cucumber (TV series)
| Television series | |
|---|---|
| German title | Cucumber |
| Original title | Cucumber |
| Country of production | United Kingdom |
| original language | English |
| year | 2015 |
| Production company |
Red Production Company, Adjacent Productions |
| length | 46 minutes |
| Episodes | 8 in 1 season |
| genre | Dramedy |
| Director | David Evans, Alice Troughton, Euros Lyn |
| idea | Russell T Davies |
| script | Russell T Davies |
| production | Matt Strevens |
| music | Murray Gold |
| camera | Mark Adcock, Joe Russell |
| First broadcast | January 22nd, 2015 (UK) on Channel 4 |
| German-language first broadcast |
July 30, 2016 on WDR |
| occupation | |
|
Main actor:
Supporting cast:
| |
Cucumber is a British television series from 2015. Its creator is Russell T Davies , who has already realized series such as Queer as Folk , Doctor Who ( showrunner 2005-2010) and its offshoot series Torchwood . The series is a Channel 4 production . The plot of the series revolves around fictional realities in the gay life of Manchester .
Each episode of Cucumber is accompanied by an episode of Banana , a series of barely connected stories, also from the gay life of Manchester. Occasional storylines or camera shots cross briefly with scenes from the previous episode of Cucumber. And some of the protagonists also play in Cucumber, whose personal story is examined in more detail in Banana.
At the same time there is a third production called Tofu , but it has a more documentary character.
action
Henry Best is a 46-year-old insurance clerk from Manchester who has lived happily with his partner Lance Sullivan for nine years. However, he refuses to marry as well as penetrating sex . After an argument about it, Henry leaves the house. After he lost his job due to a great misunderstanding, he led an unfamiliar new life in a shared apartment with young, open-minded homosexuals. Occasional meetings with Lance included, at which both, but unsuccessfully, seek rapprochement.
Henry finds the handsome young Freddy attractive, but from the outset he categorically rules out a sexual relationship with an "old man" like Henry. Nevertheless, a respectful friendship develops, which Freddy often doubts his made up decision.
Lance falls in love with his attractive work colleague Daniel, who does answer his advances, but as a declared heterosexual only very hesitantly. But this makes it clear that the latter only denies his homosexuality. An attitude that later escalates when he kills Lance with a golf club in self-loathing after willingly having oral sex.
In many other, also comical, subplots, the homosexuality of middle-aged men, framing conservative ideas, is contrasted and connected to the modern and free life of young homosexuals in Manchester.
development
Davis came up with the idea for Cucumber while he was a producer on Doctor Who . Thought to be the "spiritual successor" of the Channel 4 series Queer as Folk (1999/2000), planned to be called More Gay Men , it should be focused on the gay life of middle-aged men. It gave birth to the question “Why would so many gay men be happy if we split up?” Asked by his friend Carl Austin in 2001. The series was originally supposed to be produced as early as 2006, but the success Davies had with Doctor Who delayed the start of production. There is only one season, also because Davies declined to produce another season due to the story being told ("one and done story") .
The names Cucumber (English for cucumber ) and Banana, as well as the title of the online companion series Tofu, were inspired by a scientific study on the male erection . The respective degrees of stiffening were divided into tofu , peeled banana, unpeeled banana and cucumber.
Cast and dubbing
The series was set to music at Rainer Brandt Filmproduktion in Berlin. Erik Paulsen wrote the dialogue books and directed the dialogue.
Main cast
| role | actor | Main role | Voice actor |
|---|---|---|---|
| Henry Best | Vincent Franklin | 1.01–1.08 | Hans-Eckart Eckhardt |
| Lance Sullivan | Cyril Nri | 1.01–1.08 | |
| Freddie Baxter | Freddie Fox | 1.01–1.08 | Patrick Baehr |
| Dean Monroe | Fisayo Akinade | 1.01–1.08 | Amadeus Strobl |
| Cleo Whitaker | Julie Hesmondhalgh | 1.01–1.08 | |
| Adam Whitaker | Ceallach Spellman | 1.01–1.08 | |
| Daniel Coltrane | James Murray | 1.01–1.08 | |
| Cliff Costello | Con O'Neill | 1.01–1.08 |
Supporting cast
| role | actor | Supporting role | Voice actor |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vivienne Scott | Letitia Wright | 1.02, 1.05, 1.07, 1.08 | Lina Rabea Mohr |
| Veronica Chandra | Anjli Mohindra | 1.02, 1.05-1.08 | Jessica Walther-Gabory |
| Tomasz | Matthew Bailey | 1.01–1.08 | |
| Violet | Hannah John-Kamen | 1.02, 1.03 | Nadine Zaddam |
International charisma
On January 22nd, 2015, Cucumber was first broadcast on Channel 4 , which also had the series produced. The sub-series Banana could be followed on Channel 4's second channel "E4".
TV stations, which are primarily aimed at an LBGT audience, then preferred the series in their programs. Both series, Cucumber and Banana , were first broadcast on Logo in the United States on April 13, 2015 and were seen by almost 55,000 viewers. The two series were also broadcast in Canada in spring 2015 on OUTtv . Cucumber was broadcast in full in the Netherlands on NPO 3 near the Amsterdam Gay Pride (from the end of July 2015). The Banana series could be viewed on the broadcaster's website. In Australia, both series were broadcast on SBS . and can also be seen on the video-on-demand service Stan .
The series are also available as video-on-demand from TVNZ in New Zealand. In Germany, the two series were synchronized and broadcast on WDR from July 30, 2016 . But only 70,000 viewers tuned in to the first episode. In February and March 2017, the series were repeated on ONE .
Reviews
In The Guardian , Sam Wollaston wrote that the premiere of the Cucumber - Banana - Tofu trilogy was the television event of the week and also that although the presentation was "glorious, triumphant, explicitly gay," you do not feel left out as a heterosexual audience.
Barbara Dürnberger from the Wiener Zeitung wrote that "Cucumber" doesn't follow any rules, doesn't show any consideration. Neither on the audience nor on his performers. It is probably Davies' darkest work to date.
Norbert Blech from Queer.de wrote that Cucumber, similar to the US television series Looking , is pursuing a different approach that tries to get closer to the community as a whole with particularly individual characters and life episodes, including how people communicate and deal with one another becomes.
Web links
- Cucumber in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Channel 4 official website
Individual evidence
- ↑ German synchronous index: German synchronous index | Series | Cucumber. Retrieved April 10, 2018 .
- ↑ Premiere Cucumber
- ↑ Logo to broadcast Cucumber and Banana . In: Logo . Logo / Viacom Networks. March 1, 2015. Accessed March 20, 2017.
- ↑ Mitch Metcalf: SHOWBUZZDAILY's Top 25 Monday Cable Originals (& Network Update): 4.13.2015 . In: ShowBuzzDaily . Retrieved March 20, 2017.
- ↑ Info from the transmitter OUTtv
- ↑ Info on the website of the station NPO 3
- ↑ Queer kaleidoscope to celebrate Mardi Gras on SBS . In: TV Tonight . TV Tonight. March 1, 2015. Accessed March 20, 2017.
- ↑ Peer Schader: RTL celebrates the strong “Ninja Warrior” final, “Duel um die Welt” with best-of, on the other hand, no chance ›Meedia . July 31, 2016.
- ↑ Sam Wollaston: Cucumber, Banana and Tofu review - 'gloriously, triumphantly, explicitly gay and the television event of the week' . In: The Guardian , January 22, 2015. Retrieved March 23, 2017.
- ↑ Barbara Dürnberger: Of cucumbers, bananas and tofu. In: Wiener Zeitung. July 25, 2016. Retrieved March 20, 2017 .
- ^ Norbert Blech: Queer as Folk: The Next Generation. In: queer.de. Queer Communications GmbH (queercom), January 23, 2015, accessed on March 20, 2017 .