Queer As Folk (2000 TV Series) - Show History

Show History

The show drew strong ratings for both Showtime and Canada's Showcase. In fact, in Canada, the series had such high ratings that by the end of the fifth season Showcase chose to air the show in hour-and-ten-minute timeblocks to accommodate all the ads without cutting any scenes. This was not a problem for Showtime, since that service is commercial-free and no ads were ever broadcast during a Queer as Folk telecast.

The series ran for five seasons (2000 to 2005 on Showtime and 2001 to 2005 on Showcase).

Canada's Showcase, which was making a great deal of money from the advertising demand, did briefly consider producing a sixth season, but as Showtime owned much of the rights to the series and funded much of the budget, Showcase decided against it.

Another U.S. cable channel owned by Viacom, Logo, began broadcasting edited, commercially sponsored episodes of Queer as Folk on September 21, 2006.

As of January 9, 2008, Showcase began offering the Canadian version of the Queer as Folk episodes on their website. These Canadian versions differ from the Showtime and DVD versions in that they have breaks within the episodes (where commercials would have been inserted) and make references to "Showcase" and "Temple Street Productions presents" instead of "Showtime presents". Unlike the Season 1 DVDs, episodes 101 and 102 are presented separately and episode 102 is the rare extended version of the episode, created for broadcast during reruns of the first season and not seen since 2002. The first seven episodes were posted on January 9 and one additional episode was posted each week after.