Christopher and his kind

Are there too many "gay" films being made? Will familiarity breed contempt? Could gaiety become a genre as outmoded as musical operettas, cowboys'n'Indians or the Perils of Pauline? There's probably an ever-lasting market for gay romantic comedies, and definitely one for hard-porn, but I wonder how long normal (ie non-GLBT) TV viewers can be expected to face ever more gay-focused movies made for their living-room screen?

Christopher and His Kind is another BBC TV movie presenting gays as fascinating dramatic characters. On a PC scale, it also ticks a lot of boxes coincidentally, for a dramatisation of Christopher Isherwood's autobiographical memoir of life in 1930s Berlin also documents the rise of the Nazis and increased persecution of Jews.

Not that Isherwood was bothered by politics, and apparently planned to do some writing in Berlin for an Oswald Mosley magazine. He'd been urged to go there ("for the boys") by his public-school friend (and undeclared lover) W.H Auden, to delight in a divine decadence that included many rent boys. Several eccentric people who lived in or visited his boarding house became fictional characters in his fictional tale of Sally Bowles (who became a larger-than-life lead role for Lisa Minelli in Cabaret).

The movie shows us that her real-life inspiration was a socialist Englishwoman, Jean Ross, who survived in Berlin through prostitution and singing in a cheap nightclub. She's a juicy role for Imogen Potts, a young British actress who's already had good supporting parts in Hollywood. She manages the tough task of talking posh while sounding down-to-earth, being sluttish and politically aware.

That wasn't Isherwood's style, judging by the way he's portrayed by Matt (Dr Who) Smith: he speaks very poshly, almost painfully so, and stares at life with supercilious glances, lecherous twinkles or emotionally dead eyes. It's possible to sense a continuity of character between Smith's egotistic observer and Colin Firth's troubled gay lecturer in Tom Ford's adaptation of Isherwood's A Single Man, but Smith's is a much less likeable character. Isherwood probably was too, as his memoir revealed with an honesty that disgusted his former Berlin lover (as an end caption notes).

The memoir was adapted by Kevin Elyot, a former UK TV actor who switched to writing in the mid-90s, winning the 1995 Olivier award for his stage play, My Night with Reg (about four intimate friends of a man with AIDS). It was filmed by Roger Michell for the BBC. Elyot has also written a quartet of Miss Marple movies and a couple of Poirot screenplays for TV, and another gay drama, Clapham Junction, screened on Channel Four. His Riot at the Rite, also for the BBC, focused on bisexual dancer Nijinsky, and he's cultivated a rewarding patch of gay docudrama.

Director Geoffrey Sax, a TV veteran since 1979, created well-decorated period settings marred only by too many over-composed pretty shots through windows. One extra is given full-frontery (none of the lead actors are), Jean Ross's American boyfriend is shown in full-rear nudity, and there's enough kissing and simulated buggery to delight Gay Libbers.

The excellent supporting cast of characters includes Toby Jones (Capote in Infamous) as an English masochist spied through keyholes, Tony-winning Lindsay Duncan (Rome on TV) as the writer's miserable snobbish mother, and former Burberry model Douglas (Boy George on TV) Booth as Isherwood's young German sweet-sweeper lover. It's easy to see why he won the title role in the current version of Romeo and Juliet.

To give Elyot well-earned credit, although this gay docudrama may appear to excuse, almost promote, male homosexuality, it also depicts its gay protagonist as a mean-spirited, selfish writer who'd joke about Nazis killing yodellers. I'd like to have seen Firth play this role too, if only because Matt Smith's eyes and expression are not attractive, to me.