FROM BROOKSIDE TO BERENA, DIVA’S NEW CREATIVE DIRECTOR JACQUIE LAWRENCE EXAMINES THE HISTORY OF LESBIAN TV

The iconic Brookside kiss

For me, 1994 was a seminal year. Three important lesbian moments happened. The first DIVA was published, Dyke TV was airing and television’s first ever pre-watershed lesbian kiss was screened on Brookside.

Like the assassination of JFK or the death of Diana, everyone can remember where they were and what they were doing when Beth Jordache first snogged Margaret Clemence.

I was sat on the sofa with my then girlfriend. We were both riveted – although I had every reason to feel blasé, as my own lesbian drama Double Entente was transmitted on Channel 4 around the same time.

The difference was that mine – a vaguely lesbian erotic short film featuring two lesbian actors and a red Alfa Romeo Spider – was relegated to the margins of the schedule, while the Brookside scene, featuring two straight actors and a doorframe, was transmitted in prime time.

The tabloids, as expected, went spare, and despite being a pretty tame embrace by today’s standards, the scene caused such a storm amongst viewers that it was removed from that week’s omnibus edition. By then though, the challenge had been set and for lesbians, within and outside of the television industry.

It was a clarion call to increase the reflection of our lives on the small screen. For my part in this quest, I was named and shamed as the “filth pedlar of Channel 4”.

The ensuing lesbian invasion of the airwaves did not happen overnight but programming zones like Channel 4’s Camp Christmas, which aired later in 1994, helped push boundaries. Creators Caz Gorham and Frances Dickenson explain why it happened: “In some ways it was us putting up two fingers to a Britain which had banged on about conservative family values – policies that were hostile to lesbians. We wanted to show the reality of Christmas, as we knew it, we wanted to show LGBTQI people as part of a loving and nurturing extended family. And the vehicle we chose to do that was a prime time Christmas Eve entertainment special.”