The premier is very much a retelling of the first two episodes of Queer as Folk (UK). There are many similarity in terms of plotline, although the setting has moved to Pittsburgh compared to Manchester. The opening club scenes in "Babylon" capture the electric atmosphere of a great night out in gay clubland.

The opening credits is like one of this videos when acid house was popular, an onslaught of pastel neon colors with a pumping techno beat. Flashing images of muscle-bound men wearing various types of not much and the occasional cowboy hat. Subtle it is not.

Featuring tracks from The Temperer, Divine Heather Small, etc, the soundtrack is very upbeat / high energy and works with the MTV style video effects. Can't wait for the first compilation to be released.

There original characters are easy to recognise although the new character names take a while to get use to. Aparently Russell T Davies requested the changes.

The dialogue did seem a bit strained at times and it felt the new writers could have been a bit more original in coming up with variations on the original cutting dialogue.
US - So you and Lindsay both had an infant tonight
UK - So you and both had a child tonight.

The dialogue seems spoken slower. Perhaps that is just the american accent we are getting us to.

Gale Harold as Brian (Stuart) and Randy Harrison as Justin (Nathan) seem to fit their characters very well. Hal Sparks as Michael (Vince) seems slightly too eloquent and educated and confident to a supermarket department manager and to be living in Brian's shadow. The original Vince came across as far less self confident. Emmett and Ted are both played extremely well. You can already feel the pangs of hurt is persumably Ted characters comes to an early end.

I did laugh at the 20, 19 ,17 sorry is this a rocket countdown section in the bedroom scene, but most of the time the replacement words didn't alway ring true. UK: So you've both had a child last night Perhaps its just being too familiar with the original that the impact is somewhat lost and I supposed you have to accept americanisms such as "Faggot" replacing "Queer" on the side of the car.

Watching "Is America Ready for Queer as Folk", I found it a bit rich that the american writers were claiming credit for the script when it is very obviously a rehash of Russell's original work with a few name changes.

You'll be pleased to know the US bedroom scene is just as graphic as the original. The naked flesh quotient is satisfyingly high. Ole Justin can't half lift his legs high. Are you sure he's straight. Perhaps this is groundbreaking for american TV.

The big question is how are they going to extend it past the original 10 episodes of the orginal. At this rate we are going to be half way through the 22 week run before new storylines are going to be required. The original script was so strong that following it scene by scene, as this version does you could hardly fail. The real test will be how the writers develop the story and characters afterwards. That will be the real test as to strength and quality of QAFUS.