Bravo goes for reality: gay dating

Television, film and theater are no longer traveling the straight and narrow. This year’s Tony Awards telecast, which aired on CBS in June, was a celebration of gay plays (“Take Me Out”), gay performers (Harvey Fierstein), gay directors (Joe Mantello). Then the world discovered in “Legally Blonde 2: Red, White and Blonde” that Elle’s beloved Chihuahua Bruiser is gay and in love with a Rottweiler owned by a conservative member of Congress. And in the fall, ABC premieres its twist on “Romeo and Juliet,” a sitcom called “It’s All Relative,” where Juliet has two fathers.

Cable’s Bravo has embraced this new “gay” acceptance. The network, once best-known for its “Inside the Actors Studio,” was bought last year by NBC. And since the Peacock network has taken over, Bravo has ruffled its feathers with a brand-new look.

Sure, Bravo still runs “Actors Studio,” feature films and the occasional arts specials. You can even find “Hill Street Blues” reruns in odd hours. But it has gotten into the reality series fad this summer in a big -- and gay -- way. Just two weeks after the premiere of its deliciously fun make-over series “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” broke ratings records for the network -- a 30-minute edited version even aired Thursday on parent network NBC -- Bravo is offering “Boy Meets Boy,” which is being billed as television’s first gay dating show.

The six-part series, premiering at 9 p.m. Tuesday, is hosted by Dan Behr and features James, a hunky 32-year-old human resources administrator. James and 15 bachelors live in luxurious isolation where the contestants angle for James’ affections, together and individually. Aided by his best friend Andra, James eliminates men from the competition. But neither James nor Andra know that some of the contenders are actually straight men just pretending to be gay. Supposedly, the twists in this process will challenge popular conceptions of what is considered gay and straight behavior. That’s the idea, anyway.

All we can say to Bravo is “Brava.”

-- Susan King