The first Singaporean-made boys’ love drama has been released on YouTube this week.
“Getaway” is created by Sean Foo, the founder of media publication Dear Straight People.
According to the description mentioned on the channel it is based on an original story from a gay creator, ‘Getaway’ features a gay director alongside an openly queer cast from Singapore and Thailand.
Singapore’s “first gay BL drama series”
Speaking to South China Morning Post (SCMP) creator Sean Foo told that he was in his final year of university in Singapore in 2015 when he founded Dear Straight People, an LGBT media platform that now reaches, on average, about 300,000 people a month. Foo hopes his series will raise acceptance of the LGBT community in the city state.
Foo told South China Morning Post (SCMP), “The script took about two months, the fundraising about a month and the filming took just a few days, which surprised many people.”
In an article on his website Dear Straight People Foo wrote about the long and winding journey it took to make ‘Getaway’, Singapore’s first gay BL web drama series.
Foo Wrote,
Dear Straight People, BL, short for Boys Love, has become an umbrella term for any Asian drama centering on a gay love story. In many parts of Asia where LGBTQ+ rights are lacking, BL dramas have emerged as the primary form of gay media representation.
In 2020 alone, Thailand and Taiwan produced over 80 gay BL dramas. That same year, South Korea jumped on the bandwagon by producing its first gay BL drama series, which was subsequently picked up by Netflix.
In fact, one of the most popular gay BL dramas of all time actually came from China; Addicted aka 上瘾.
Singapore unfortunately, still does not have a gay BL drama series to call our own. In Singapore, consensual sex between men is still criminalised and positive LGBT+ media representation is banned on mainstream media, Foo explained on his website.
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Since starting Dear Straight People in 2015, I’ve told numerous stories from the LGBTQ+ community in the form of articles and documentaries.
As impactful as they have been, they don’t tug at the heartstrings in the same way that a gay BL drama series does.
Producing a gay drama series has been on my bucket list for the longest time. But it was only in 2022 that the stars finally aligned for me to make this goal a reality. Not long after my conversation with Snooker, I got covid. Forced into isolation for 10 days with no distractions proved to be a blessing in disguise. It gave me the time I needed to finally come up with a script, Foo added.
CAST : Getaway has an openly queer cast from Singapore and Thailand, including Steven David Lim, a familiar face on Singapore television during the 1990s – he is best known for starring the hit series Growing Up, the longest-running English drama series in Singapore.
Snooker : Thai actor Paween “Snooker” Nalieng, best known for his role in the popular gay web drama series Gay OK Bangkok; Otto Fong, one of Singapore’s most prominent gay advocates; and Zymone, a trans woman and drag queen from Thailand who was a contestant on The Voice Thailand.
The first episode of “Getaway” is now available on Dear Straight People’s YouTube channel.
“After his coming out to his conservative father goes horribly wrong, Sam jets off to Bangkok in search of his exiled gay uncle for guidance, who was similarly disowned for being gay many years ago. During his search for his uncle, Sam meets Top, a hopeless Thai romantic who has been unlucky in love. Together, they search for Sam’s uncle, but they end up finding something much more.”
Images : Screengrabs/YouTube
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