What a view | Why Queer Eye: We’re in Japan! is as empathetic as it is enjoyable
- The Fab Five visit the Land of the Rising Sun to bring joy to four deserving souls
- Plus, HBO’s His Dark Materials’ is faithful to Philip Pullman’s original and fun, too
Anyone doubting that the show formerly known as Queer Eye for the Straight Guy is exportable beyond the United States – and who missed last year’s one-off Australian instalment – need tune in no further than the four-part Queer Eye special, filmed in Tokyo and Yokohama.
Which also upends the notion that the concept wouldn’t work in a country with a strong, even rigid, sense of its own culture. That, however, is precisely why Queer Eye: We’re in Japan! works so well, the “heroes” of each episode all feeling bound in some way to follow cast-iron rules rather than their neglected desires.
Netflix must have known they were onto a winner when the Fab Five arrived to splash some colour and pizazz all over the life of one of the most deserving, self-effacing characters ever likely to grace a screen. Yoko Sakuma, in her late 50s, runs a hospice in memory of her sister, a cancer victim. Having given up every room in her house next door to help the hospice expand, Sakuma, paying her own needs no regard, was in the habit of sleeping on the floor, under a table. And that’s a long way from the elegance of her idol, Audrey Hepburn.
Similarly blessed by the tactful, empathetic quintet are a female manga artist with no self-confidence; a gay man working in marketing who feels obliged to conceal his sexuality; and a cripplingly shy radio director who longs to restore the spark to his marriage – and who wants “to change from a rock to a psychedelic flower”. Party like it’s 1967!