When Darren Star debuted his first television series as a creator, Beverly Hills, 90210, in the fall of 1990, he was under 30 and had only a few prior scripting credits.
That program became one of the Fox network’s first successes and revolutionized teen-targeted television. Less than two years later, 90210 gave birth to Melrose Place, a spinoff that gained even more popularity.
Since then, Star has hardly left the cultural conversation: he created Sex & The City, one of HBO’s biggest sitcom hits ever; his show Younger maintained a loyal audience despite numerous network and platform changes, and remakes and spin-offs of his different projects have made them into pop culture franchises.
With the release of Uncoupled, which debuted this week, Star continues his collaboration with Netflix. Neil Patrick Harris portrays Michael, a 40-something New York realtor who is shocked when Colin (Tuc Watkins), his 17-year lover, unexpectedly breaks up with him.
The fact that Doug Savant’s Matt Fielding, an openly homosexual character, was one of the series regulars on Melrose at the time made news, but this is the first time Star, who is himself gay, has started a series with a queer protagonist.
Darren Star also had some insights about the show and shared them with other sources:
“It was like an arranged marriage through our mutual agent Jay Sures, but I knew Jeffrey for years as a friend. I was a big fan of his work. And I had this idea about a romantic comedy about a gay man going through a breakup, and Jeffrey really sparked to it. We both had experienced situations like this, knew people who have been in situations like this, and we just started imagining what this show would be, and how we really had a lot of facility to write this in terms of our own experiences, and just the world that we lived in. For the first time, we really had an opportunity to write a big, broad, mainstream romantic comedy from a gay male perspective.”
