Flashback February - Will and Grace

Will and Grace is one of those long running sit-coms that no one probably predicted to do as well as it did.

I mean if you think about a sit-com that revolves around a gay man and his dubbed ‘hag,’ and their co-dependant relationship, is that a premise that you think would last for eight seasons? No? And yet it did.

I was first introduced to Will and Grace as a child and didn’t quite understand it and didn’t think much else of it until I was re-introduced as a teenager, after the show itself had long finished.

Will and Grace had a loyal fanbase for many, many years, but I was surprised that it didn’t have a bigger one. The writing for the screenplay was some of the quickest, wittiest, and self-effacing humour I had ever seen grace American TV sets.

Without really trying too, Will and Grace also for the first time introduced gay characters in our lives that weren’t one-dimensional token one-liner characters. No, in fact, the gay characters had relationship problems and general issues just like the rest of the straight community already long represented on television.

For that reason, the show had heart and a strong sense of community emanated from not only the fan base but also the cast and producers.

Not to mention the amazing character-acting from Megan Mullally, and Sean Hayes who play ‘Karen’ and ‘Jack,’ whom without the show simply wouldn’t have survived.

Sit-coms often tend to lack contextual information, or variety, which means that they have to rely heavily on the characters portrayed and the screenplay to be successful.

There aren’t many sit-coms today that manage to pull this off as well as Will and Grace did.

Whether you’re scrolling through Tumblr or talking to your neighbour in your office, Will and Grace is one of those quotable shows that still lives on in our memories. Let’s hope it stays that way.

Review by Jemma Nott