Looking pretty

Have you ever sat down to watch HBO’s Girls and thought to yourself, “Hmm, this is good, but what it really needs is for everyone to be a gay dude?” Well you’re in luck! (Also, isn’t the whole point of Girls that it’s . . . about girls? Way to take a show and spin it into something entirely different, viewer.)

Looking, set to premiere on Jan 19 on HBO, is written and directed by Andrew Haigh, the man behind the feel-good movie Weekend. The preview clip isn’t exactly forthcoming — we see some dudes making out, Jonathan Groff looking pensively off into the distance, and possibly Russell Tovey peeking around there somewhere. It’s hard to tell. It’s a really short clip, but judge for yourself with the link above.

In an interview with Out, Groff talks about the steamy scenes he’s filmed, saying, “I have shot some sex scenes. The sex scenes in Weekend were beautiful and sexy — in addition to, and most importantly, feeling really authentic and real. So I hope that our sex scenes are sexy — and I think that they are — but I think even more than that what we’re trying to display is a reality of gay sex as opposed to the salaciousness of gay sex. We’re trying just to keep it real — which means humor. Some of our sex scenes are very emotional and very beautiful. Some of our sex scenes are awkward. We’re trying to get as close to reality as we possibly can. Hopefully, when people watch it, you’ll think, Oh, I’ve had that exact experience. I know what it feels like to be intimate with someone in that way.

“As far as the acting is concerned, I feel connected to it, because it’s coming from a sense of intimacy and a sense of character. Sometimes sex scenes in TV shows feel like they’re thrown in there, and I think ours are pretty character connected and character-driven.”

There’s a lot of buzz surrounding Looking, with many bloggers hailing it as the next Girls. It’s funny, because when you trace it back, Girls was the next Sex and the City (which was a harrowing biography following four drag queens), which then loosely inspired Queer as Folk two years later; it’s nice that we’ve come full circle in our television roots.

HBO’s Looking premieres Sunday, Jan 19.