New Series “Feral” Looks At Gay Love In The Bible Belt
What if the action of HBO’s “Looking” was dropped right in the middle of Memphis, Tennessee? That’s the question creator Morgan Jon Fox sets out to answer with “Feral,” a new original television series following a wayward band of gay twenty-somethings as they stumble through life and love.
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Fox describes his characters as “kids who are left on their own, whether it’s financially, whether it’s identity, or whether their lovers are deceased. Whatever that is, they’re left to their own devices to carve their own way.”
Related: Two Bold Gay Teens Face Smalltown Haters Of Their Newly Formed GSA In Tennessee
The story centers on Billy and Daniel, two best friends who have shacked up in a bungalow situated in the frenetic, artistic queer community of Memphis. Things get off to a bumpy start — they have to kick out their third roommate, because that roommate has a heroin habit he can’t kick — and they only get bumpier as the tale progresses.
“My characters have their issues,” Fox says, ““but I didn’t want them to be based in cynicism. I wanted their motives and struggles to be pure and honest in a way that wasn’t just, ‘I’m a spoiled rich person without meaning in my life.’” To his mind, the fact that the characters are gay is almost besides the point.
“There are so many stories that are set in New York or L.A., but I feel that we have a story to tell that is uniquely southern,” he says. “Memphis is a big city, but because we are in a sense living off the grid, in the Bible Belt, and without the supportive institutions that exist in big coastal cities, we have created our own community, and I think that’s what’s so beautiful about coming up in Memphis.”
“Feral” debuts Oct 6th on Dekkoo.
