If You're Excited About 'Looking', Then Check Out These 10 Gay-Themed Offerings.

Your options don't all begin and end with 'Queer As Folk'.

HBO's new gay-focused comedy-drama 'Looking' starts tomorrow night (Monday, January 27) on Sky Atlantic.

Via YouTube.com

It's had a good critical response so far in the US

Plus it stars the adorable and sexy (sexdorable?) Essex boy, Russell Tovey.

Via Sky/image.net

So if you're excited about the show - or have already seen it - and want to indulge in more rainbow-focused light(ish) entertainment, then you could do worse than to hunt down the following:

1. The Outs

Via YouTube.com

A funny, sweet and grounded web series about how a pair of ex-boyfriends - and their wider social circle - deal with their bad break-up. It's set in Brooklyn, and is written by and stars the fabulous Adam Goldman and Sasha Winters.

You can also watch all seven episodes here.

Whatever This Is

Via YouTube.com

Adam Goldman's second web series is a funny and often painfully relatable tale of a group of broke twenty-something friends (including several rainbow warriors) trying to find love, a decent apartment and a job that doesn't make them want to stay in bed and cry all day.

Watch all six episodes here.

2. Weekend

Via YouTube.com

Andrew Haigh's ground-breakingly unfussy, tender, sexy and touching 2011 movie about a one-night stand (between Tom Cullen and Chris New) that develops into something deeper. It's on television on Friday February 7th - Channel 4, , at 11.20pm

3. Keep The Lights On

Via YouTube.com

This the darkest option of the list: it's a painful but compelling look at a gay relationship torn apart by addiction and co-dependence.

4. The 'Tales Of The City' series

Via beatstreetnyc.com

The nine books in Armistead Maupin's series - the latest and final entry, The Days Of Anna Madrigal, has just been published - are essential reading for any fans of gay literature.

They are set in San Francisco and cover a span of time from the 1970s to the present day, making them a fascinating time capsule of evolving social and cultural attitudes to LGBT people, as well as a rare, immediate chronicle of the Aids catastrophe.

The books focus on a disparate group of characters all living in or around the one apartment block - including a transgender landlady, a young gay romantic and a sheltered country girl-turned-fag hag. Episodic, often deceptively simple, funny and always compelling, few readers have ever regretted devoting their time to these Tales.

There's also a TV mini-series of the first three books...

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...starring Olympia Dukakis and a then-largely unknown Laura Linney.

5. Cowboys And Angels

Via YouTube.com

This heart-in-the-right-place Irish movie, from 2003, stars a pre-Downton Allen Leech as a young gayer who helps a sheltered, sensitive, straight civil servant (Michael Legge) to come out of his shell. Leech's character is very much in the early-Noughties pop culture vein of exisiting mostly to help the straight protagonist achieve self-actualisation, but it's still well worth a look, and marks a significant advance in portrayals of gay characters in Irish fiction.

6. Queer As Folk UK and US

Via vejoseries.com

They're both very different beasts: for one thing, the US translation is much longer (running for five seasons and 83 episodes, as opposed to the UK version's two seasons and 10 episodes).

But if you approach them as separate artistic offerings, there's a lot of fun to be had with both. The Manchester iteration just about shades it, but, then again, the US version does have Sharon Gless (aka Christine Cagney) in full-on fag-hag supportive mother mode.

Via YouTube.com

7. The L Word

Via news.l-word.com

If there's little in the way of entertainment aimed at gay men, there's even less for gay women. But The L Word, though controversial among some gay viewers, became a word-of-mouth hit for a core audience of loyal fans, running for six seasons and 70 episodes. It remains largely undiscovered by most audiences - one to add to your list of box set projects.

8. Please Like Me

Via YouTube.com

This Aussie comedy - created by and starring comedian Josh Thomas - puts an enjoyable twist on the coming out story, and does so with a rich streak of dark humour. For instance, it has the rather inspired casting of Debra Lawrence (Pippa from Home & Away!) as Thomas' swearing, depressed, suicidal mother.

Plus Wade Briggs, who plays Thomas' boyfriend in the show, is one of the most beautiful specimens you'll ever see.

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9. The Broken Hearts Club: A Romantic Comedy

Via YouTube

Made in 2000 - riding a post-Will & Grace gay-friendly pop cultural moment, but still rather ahead of its time - this West Hollywood-set ensemble comedy is breezy escapism, and is one of few pieces of popular romantic fiction offered for gay men.

It has a good - and, might I say, hot cast, including Dean Cain, Timothy Olyphant, Andrew Keegan, Justin Theroux and Zach Braff.

10. The novels of Stephen McCauley and Brian Finnegan

Via p.gr-assets.com

American author McCauley has penned six gay-themed books, the most famous of which is The Object Of My Affection, turned into a 1998 movie starring Jennifer Aniston and Paul Rudd.

Via brianfinnegan.ie

Irish author Brian Finnegan has published two entertaining novels, which feature well-drawn and believable gay characters.

Feel free to add your suggestions below.

'Looking', Monday, January 27th, Sky Atlantic, 10pm.