Perhaps the most shocking thing about “Looking,” HBO’s new show about gay men, is how shocking I, a gay man, found it.
The series, which premieres Sunday at 10:30 p.m., has been called “The gay ‘Girls’” and “The gay ‘Sex and the City,’ ” but truthfully, neither of those monikers does the show justice.
At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, “Looking” is likely the most realistic depiction of living as a modern gay man that television has ever seen. It’s groundbreaking stuff — stunningly honest and brutally fair with its flawed subjects’ search for meaning in love and life.
“Looking” follows Patrick (an enchanting Jonathan Groff) and his two friends Agustin (Frankie J. Alvarez) and Dom (Murray Bartlett), as they maneuver through their 20s and 30s in San Francisco. The title borrows a term from gay hook-up culture — The message “Looking?” on an app such as Grindr is simultaneously a salutation and an invitation — and alludes to the search for oneself.
Rather than being reminiscent of the comedies it’s been positioned against, “Looking” feels more like “Weekend” — a beautiful little indie film that series director Andrew Haigh put out in 2011 to much acclaim — for its pull-no-punches weekend spent with two men hooking up.
Like “Weekend,” this show is not for the faint of heart. If you currently consider gay people to be sexual deviants, “Looking” will probably confirm your beliefs. But if you’re an open-minded person with a soul, you’ll find it to be a gut-wrenching, fresh approach to how entertainment portrays gay men. You’ll recognize just how rare it is to see them interacting romantically without the tired tropes of coming out or sleeping with the closeted football player.
Which is exactly why it’s so shocking.
Growing up in small- town Virginia, I was a ’tween fascinated by “Will & Grace.” I’d sneak down into the basement to watch it undetected by my parents. But by the time I was a teenager, I began to see the show’s stereotype-laden humor as suffocating, shaping the way people expected me to behave. “Queer As Folk,” though probably the best mainstream representation on TV we’ve had to date, didn’t make me feel much better, what with its sassy slang and mesh crop tops.
I swear, it’s not in my head. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been told I remind someone of Jack from “Will & Grace” or “that gay assistant on ‘Ugly Betty,’ ” though thankfully never Billy Crystal on ABC’s ’70s-era parody “Soap.” Maybe I wore my clothes a little tight and enjoyed a well-written Broadway soundtrack, but was this vapid world of lame sexual innuendos really what my future held? Had I no choice but to become a fashion assistant with a sharp tongue and a paisley ascot?
This is why “Looking” makes me so uncomfortable. I’m not used to seeing my real life — the way I really talk, flirt, hurt — on a screen in my home. To be presented suddenly with something that feels so authentic in such a raw way is deeply unsettling, like looking in the mirror and noticing a scar you’ve never seen before. It frightens me that anyone and everyone can turn their TV on Sunday night for the next eight weeks and see this world that feels like a piece of me.
I don’t know if “Looking” is a work of art. I don’t really even know if it’s a great TV show.
But I do know that nothing I’ve seen on television has felt so true.