Boy Culture: The Series *** (2021, Derek Magyar, Darryl Stephens, Jason Caceres) – Movie Review

Q Allan Brocka’s comedy Boy Culture had its world premiere at the BFI Flare festival in 2006 and this 2021 six-part continuation story sequel, Boy Culture: The Series, strung together as a standalone drama feature, finds ageing but still fit and sexy popular gay escort-for-hire X (Derek Magyar) adapting to a very different world where all the other rent guys are boys, and the internet is the name of the game.

X may be hard working, punctual, safe and organised, but, boy, do the boys have the competitive edge in the digital age, so X needs to learn a thing or three to survive and hopefully prosper.

Derek Magyar returns from the original Boy Culture as the older but little wiser escort X, who still needs to pay the rent after he decides to break with his boyfriend Andrew (Darryl Stephens) but continue live in the same home with him. It turns out that breaking up is hard to do. X meets sassy, sissy young hustler Chayce (Jason Caceres), who unexpectedly becomes both his pimp and mentor, and helps him to navigate the now greatly changed world he left 10 years ago. Weirdly, the boy is father to the man.

Boy Culture: The Series is well written, witty, perceptive and funny, edgy, provocative and often quite surprising. Magyar is excellent, pitching it just right, low-key and credible, playing the oddly appealing character still quite wide-eyed and naive at 35 as he stumbles his amiable and oddly good-natured way through the scene. Darryl Stephens and Jason Caceres are just right too, inhabiting their lively and quite memorable characters nicely.

It is very slickly and confidently made, with a surface cleverness that covers some considerable inner wit and wisdom. Its six-part episodic structure works surprisingly well as a feature. There’s no strain as all as the separate stories build to a satisfying entity.

In 2017, a Kickstarter campaign was launched for Boy Culture: The Series, an episodic sequel to the original.